Post-rockAlternative
Self-released · 30 September 2026
“Wear the Scars” runs two minutes fifty-nine and is the only song in everything Unité Douleur have recorded that does not reach four minutes. It sits second, between the EP’s two longest tracks. “Sun Burns” is four pieces and twenty-three minutes forty-two: “Ash Dwellers” (6:56), that one, “Sand Castles” (7:20) and “Prayers” (6:27). It came out on 30 September and there is no label behind it.
The quartet are from Caen and work with two guitars and two voices shared out: JF Hamel takes the lead and sings, Dino Van Bedt takes the rhythm and handles the main vocal. They recorded it in their own studio, which they call Room 101, with PA Grenier on bass and Louise Niez on drums; the mix and master are by Jack Bowman at BAY Custom Studios and the cover is by Claire Leloire. Both are there for the third time running. The change the credits do register is a different one: on the two previous EPs the lyrics were signed by Van Bedt alone, and here the two of them sign together. The songs are in English; the band’s French lives in the name and in the motto that comes with the record, “Un soleil écrasant // Le sang coule et sèche // Les souvenirs suppurent”.
The shape has moved less than the four new titles suggest, and in one case it has moved against them. “Below Zero” and “Pollen Haze” both close with their longest piece, 9:23 and 7:00, and “Sun Burns” puts its own third and ends on 6:27: the EP is left without the arrival point the other two had. The most compressed idea the band have ever had is those three minutes in second place, and it is spent straight away with nobody going back to it; the other three tracks live between 6:27 and 7:20, so three quarters of the record works at the same scale.
The name comes from a hospital sign, and Van Bedt has put it like this: “While waiting for a hospital appointment, I was staring at the department plaque on the wall. Unité Douleur.” “Below Zero” came out on 21 November 2025 and “Pollen Haze” on 21 March 2026, and all three carry four tracks and the same line-up.
Rating: 7.6/10
Text by Marçal Bonastre