Five years from a split record to a third album, and the French keep the cold in the melody where it belongs. Limbes have put "À l'offensive des offensés" online, the second piece of Litanies, which Frozen Records release on 15 January.
The band came together in 2021 and got out of the gate sharing a record with Mütterlein the same year. Ecluse followed in 2023 and Liernes in 2024, two full lengths inside two years, which for a band working this slowly inside the songs is a brisk rate. A 2008 demo turned up in the discography in 2024 as well, filed late.
What they do is atmospheric black metal in the older French sense: long, patient, built to climb rather than to batter, with religion and the weight of it in the themes. The new track sits second on Litanies, which means it carries the record out of its opening and into the body of the thing.
Frozen Records have the album for January, and the single is up now. For a band whose last two albums arrived a year apart, a three year gap has been long enough for the audience to wonder, and one track is enough to answer the only question that matters, which is whether the cold is still in there.