Track By Tracks: Impure Wilhelmina - Le Sanglot (2026)

Le Sanglot (The sob)

The music on this album bears the hallmark of Impure Wilhelmina: arpeggios, melodies, occasional dissonances, metallic sound, rock-inspired tendencies, meticulous songwriting, and above all, melancholy. The big change is the French vocals, which better convey the emotions we want to express.

Why “Le sanglot”? We chose this album title because the theme of tears and crying runs through many of the tracks, echoing the melancholic atmosphere mentioned earlier. More broadly, the lyrics paint a picture of a cold, ugly, mediocre world, marked by an opaque and insidious aggression. Faced with this reality, the individual can only react with violence, anger, and cynicism; can only attempt to escape it or succumb to despair and resignation. These lyrics, this song, this music create a very special alchemy that is also reflected in the artwork, through its color palette and its interplay of light and shadow.

1. Électricité noire (Black electricity):

This track stands out as an anthem to rock—to its raw energy and its cathartic power. It opens with a massive, haunting arpeggio, before the sudden entrance of the vocals, which essentially tell us: rock is dead, it has gone down, but we are the survivors. To play it is to let your sorrow flow. In a twilight world where nothing stays in place, it allows us to be touched by grace.

“Électricité noire” naturally emerged as the album’s opening track, thanks to its subject matter, the energy it exudes, and its catchy chorus. In the music video for this song, we captured that energy in a setting reminiscent of our live performances.

2. Cent mille plaies (A hundred thousand wounds):

This is a short track that follows on from “Électricité noire”, with a ’90s vibe and arpeggios that are very characteristic of Impure Wilhelmina.

The lyrics speak of artistic creation, of having to nurture one’s pain to watch it blossom, to be able to aestheticize it. The wounds become ornamental. This process opens the door to other worlds and is thus an escape from our reality, yet despite this, we are always brought back down to Earth, to the source of suffering.

The first sentence begins with “Le sang” (The blood) and thus echoes “Le sanglot”, which is no coincidence.

The idea of “a hundred thousand wounds” comes from certain statues of Christ covered in blood, which can be seen particularly in Italian churches.

3. Abîme (Abyss):

This is a track with substantial development, which immediately conveys a certain depth (as its name suggests). Its tempo is slow. The first section, with verses and a chorus, leads up to a clear-toned arpeggio that evokes a plunge into the abyss. Then the development resumes with a new phase whose intensity gradually builds, culminating once again in the arpeggio, which fades away in the finale.

It was inspired by the COVID era, when we saw a polarization of opinions and governments that suddenly became more authoritarian. We also heard a lot of nonsense coming from all over the place. And it continues to this day.

It speaks, therefore, of manipulable crowds and the voice of the masters that makes hollow beings dance, bodies torn open. It observes that this has always been the driving force behind the cyclical march of the world.

“Regarder la foule est regarder l’abîme” (To look at the crowd is to look into the abyss) echoes Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s statement: “When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” Take care, then, not to become part of the crowd—hence “l’angoissant vertige de n’être qu’un des leurs” (the agonizing vertigo of being just one of them).

4. Larmes de joie (Tears of joy):

This feverish track, with its metallic undertones, evokes outbursts of anger and their dual potential—both destructive and liberating. It explores one of the album’s recurring themes: tears. It also weaves together a range of emotions: cynicism, joy, bitterness, and, of course, anger. The whole piece is carried by the music, which shifts from being highly melodic one moment to intensely heavy the next. Amid all this roller-coaster action, we’ve always strived to preserve the fluidity that’s characteristic of Impure Wilhelmina’s compositions. And the result is one of the most intense tracks on the album.

5. Dévoreur d’étoiles (Star devourer):

This track, with its complex structure and slightly progressive elements, begins calmly before building in intensity. The music accompanies lyrics describing the arrival of a nighttime storm—a “star-devourer”—over a village we imagine to be set in the past, with pious, superstitious inhabitants who are terrified and convinced that nature’s wrath is divine punishment. It’s a rather atypical text, more descriptive than introspective, yet still very dark.

It’s one of the most melodic tracks on the album, but it also has its dark side, with a very Sabbath-esque central riff that reminds us that the devil is everywhere: in nature, but also within us.

6. Train mort (Dead train) – with Mütterlein:

“Train Mort” explores the extremes to which the ugliness of the world drives us. Oppressive guitars with industrial tones slowly build up, leading us toward a desperate lull before the crushing sound returns with full force. The whole track is carried by a voice that alternates between screaming and whispering, intertwined with Mütterlein’s vocals. The song was written in collaboration with the French artist, whose tormented worldview fit perfectly with the overall atmosphere. A natural synergy. By adding her own touch to Impure Wilhelmina’s sound, Mütterlein has deepened the darkness.

The video accompanying this track evokes the grip of anxiety generated by a cold, frenetic, and ultimately lifeless urban world. This anxiety is represented by an immense, ominous, completely black celestial body that slowly tightens its stranglehold over the entire universe.

7. Frelon ivre (Drunken hornet):

A slow, dark, and melancholic song whose lyrics explore the themes of internal violence—which we try to suppress but which is always ready to explode—and the guilt that this generates. When words are no longer enough to contain this violence, and when alcohol lowers our inhibitions, it runs wild, leading to a fatal outcome.

The theme is similar to that of "Larmes de joie" and "Train mort." It’s one of the first songs we wrote for the album, so it’s also one of the first where we tried singing in French.

8. Blanche réalité (White reality):

Inspired by a winter hike during which Michael nearly got lost in the fog, this rather dense track opens with a winding, mesmerizing riff. Its lyrics evoke the loss of bearings in our lives and in our realities. This “fog of reality” envelops us, causes us suffering, and affects both our bodies and our minds. Thus, we “transpire le bonheur comme un animal mort” (sweat happiness like a dead animal).

The video accompanying this track illustrates all of this. The character is lost in a hostile and forbidding wilderness, and eventually disappears.

9. Demain j’abandonne (Tomorrow I’m giving up):

An acoustic song about despair and giving up. We all sometimes feel like giving up on our plans and letting our lives drift aimlessly. And, for example, seeking refuge in nature (perhaps a bad idea, as we saw in “Blanche réalité”).

This song takes us to Derborence, a small mountain village in the canton of Valais, Switzerland, set in a magnificent natural landscape. It is also the title of a novel by the Swiss writer C.-F. Ramuz (1878–1947), which tells of this place and its surroundings, its rough-hewn inhabitants, and a landslide that occurred there. In fact, there were two landslides, in 1714 and 1749, traces of which can still be seen today. These landslides originated from the mountain overlooking Derborence, Les Diablerets. And so, indirectly, the theme of destructive and malevolent nature reappears, as in “Dévoreur d’étoiles”. This song was originally written as an "electric" version, with bass and drums, but then we decided it worked better on acoustic guitar, so it was a chance to add a welcome change of pace to the album with this much more emotionally driven version.

10. À jamais radieuse (Forever radiant):

This closing track can be divided into two parts.

In the first part, which has a classical structure, the lyrics revisit a theme already explored, notably in “Cent mille plaies” and “Demain j’abandonne”: the attempt to escape reality, embodied by “les innombrables” (the countless ones), “le Leviathan” (the Leviathan), “la ville” (the city), “l’océan noir” (the black ocean), etc. This section can therefore be seen (in terms of both lyrics and music) as a synthesis, a distillation of the entire album.

The second part represents one of those attempts to escape reality: we let our minds drift toward a radiant ideal—embodied by the sequence of chords presented—until the fade- out, a climactic moment that, depending on our intention, carries the listener’s mind as far as possible from the confines of their miserable reality.

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