Non Serviam. An anarchistically driven chaos troupe masquerading as a metal band. Their last record, Le Coeur Bat,1 was so atrociously underwater that it didn’t even make it to publication over here. And perhaps we should have let it air on the RMR zine. This would mean that two zero-rated records would dwell in our statistics today. Not the greatest idea, by the way. It is not desirable to collect those if you run a webzine like ours. But I digress.
Back to Non Serviam, the French band. It always amuses me when riotous and probably atheistic rebels adorn themselves with religiously tainted names. Let’s remember Sunday school, shall we? The devil cried this phrase when being chucked down to hell. Allegedly, we’ll never know for sure, of course. So, this is one of those monikers.
And now, Non Serviam are back with more mischief. The band’s newest concoction, unwieldily called La Lune Dont Mon Âme Est Pleine, meaning something like ‘the moon that fills my soul’, somewhat continues where the former record left off in 2021. What speaks in their favor this time is the airplay. Clocking at a relatively crisp 41 minutes, this new record beats the old one by a whopping 27 minutes. That is an insane improvement. And you know what? It shows, not strongly so, but it does.
The band’s style still is way out there in the experimental and psychedelic realms with – whatever seizes their weed-soaked neurons at any given moment. As per the promo dude, LLDMAEP contains soundbites from – and I quote – “…baroque music to cybergrind, sludge, darkwave, industrial, and experimental black metal.” Wow, that’s a mouthful. Oh, and do tell where all those delicious baroque musings are exactly.2 I might have missed them in all that convoluted mayhem. And we’re looking for real baroque music, such as this one or any other of the thousands of similar concoctions out there. A few milliseconds of it hidden in a riot of miscellaneous samples don’t count.
But the statement continues, telling us that this madhouse dance should somehow coalesce “…into a cohesive and uncompromising whole.” And that’s when a few crewmembers almost choked on their mutual coffees. Let me be clear about one thing. The word ‘uncompromising’ is the only one making sense. But there’s no cohesion or sense in this record.
None.
Because you see, cohesion means seeking unity in whatever you want to achieve. And La Lune Dont Mon Âme Est Pleine is the opposite. Anarchic, conflicted, antagonistic, and discordant are the adjectives coming to this reviewer’s mind. And what do you expect when the folks over at Non Serviam slam Emile Henry, the guillotine-afflicted anarchist, and the terrible goddess Kali into one pot and let things fester? ‘Xactly. Not much good will come out of it, apart from a stubborn ‘Fuck Ice’ protest splattered all over their somewhat bizarre band pics. At least a statement that one can relate to, even if this – strangely – comes from a French band. Or perhaps that is indicative of things. They like their protests over there.
As to La Lune‘s musical adventures, Non Serviam did some housecleaning. Don’t get me wrong. Dissonance is still the rule, and they would surely continue to win any prize ready to be grabbed in Freakonia. An experimental or psychedelic vile trait that treats normal songsmithing with disdain is firmly baked into their revolutionary style. But the abject, disjointed array of often unnecessary samples, bizarre axe work, and drums put in as an afterthought now stack better against their former album and – for sure – against other Masters Ov Havoc, such as Magnadur and their illbegotten waste of space. For example.
This time, Non Serviam managed to inject a sense of – production into this mare’s nest of a record. Mind you, this is still a cluttered, disorderly mess of oversampled, fast-moving elements that will jockey for every split second of attention. A wild miasma of moods and flavors that were seemingly included on a whim. Only, they weren’t because at least some of that noise salad actually starts to make some sickly sense once you let that thing ravage you a gazillion times.
Now, where does that leave us? Same as Le Cœur Bat, La Lune Dont Mon Âme Est Pleine didn’t really click with the old geezers at the RMR Review Desk. The record is, however, considerably more astute than its earlier brethren. You can sense the efforts put into the production and arrangement. And whilst we can see all those improvements, the outcome still won’t warrant any decent score on the ranking scale. This crew had excellent out-of-the-box records on the menu in 2026, of bands with similar underground urges, but an exquisite sense of execution.
Non Serviam‘s LLDMAEP ain’t one of them. Maybe next time.
Record Rating: 3/10 | Label: Lay Bare Recordings | Web: Official Band Site
Release Date: 12 June 2026