Paris-based band Point Mort (featured on IDIOTEQ previously this year)—known for blending post-hardcore, pop, electro, and even hip hop into an intense and vulnerable sound—are gearing up to release their sophomore album Le point de non-retour on April 25, 2025, via Almost Famous.
Recorded live at The Apiary in Laval with Amaury Sauvé, and mastered by Thibault Chaumont, the record continues the band’s commitment to raw, immediate production, pairing live intensity with emotional weight.
One of the new singles arrived with a chaotic video that echoes the anarchic energy of ‘90s riot acts.
Described by Louder Than War as unleashing “an anarchic punk methodology,” the song and video mark a sharpened, more mischievous edge from the band.
Thematically, Le point de non-retour explores personal and collective collapse through rhythmic ruptures and obscure subject matter, drawing from both hardcore and black metal textures.
Ahead of the album release, Point Mort shared a list of their top inspirations—books, albums, visual works, and more—that shaped the new material. Check it out below.
Top 10 Inspirations by POINT MORT
Olivier:
Books:
The only books I read are treatises on classical and jazz harmony, as well as a fair amount of solo piano and orchestral scores.
Music:
My bedside scores are mostly Rachmaninov‘s « Études Tableaux » and Piano Concerto No. 3, and Prokofiev‘s Toccata and Piano Concerto No. 2.
As for amplified music, Miss Machine and One of Us Is a Killer by Dillinger Escape Plan are albums I listen to a lot.
Also, “I” and “Catch 33” by Meshuggah.
“…Like a Clockwork” by QOTSA is often on my turntable.
Two pieces that have really made an impression on me are “Am Kreuz” and “Némelèndèlle” by Amenra.
Damien:
Video clip of Judith – A Perfect Circle (directed by David Fincher).
This is our main inspiration with Jessica Salitra (co-director with me) for our “Le point de non-retour” video clip. I know our result is far from the original, but it has always been my favourite “band playing” clip ever.
We wanted to do a classic video for that track (the band is playing over the music) and we picked some ideas from Fincher’ video.
During our preparation, we analysed every shot of Judith, every cut… This is really a masterpiece. Yes, the song is great, that helps, but there are a lot of tricks on that video (inverted shots, upside down shots, subliminal images, very unusual camera angles) that made that video special (and…ahem… this is David Fincher… period !).
Fucking Kassovitz – a documentary by François-Régis Jeanne
This is an inspiration for our documentary about the recording session of “Le point de non-retour” (co-directed with Jessica Salitra).
Everybody who likes documentaries should watch that one at least once. This is available on Youtube. That video is about Matthieu Kassovitz filming a very bad movie called “Babylon AD” and this a nightmare.
No voiceover to describe the situation, only several little captions displayed. Nothing is cut, everything is shown. This is what we tried to do with our documentary. There was a story to tell in that recording session and we didn’t want to twist the reality. Like they have done with “Fucking Kassovitz”.
Jesus Piece – So unknown
Jesus Piece was an inspiration for the track “Iecur” for “Le point de non retour”.
Actually, it was more like a starting point rather than an inspiration. It went through the “Point mort musical shredding machine” and the result is Iecur. This is what happens when Olivier (composer of Iecur) works on something: we wanted something very short, simple and punchy (like Jesus Piece), at the end, we inherit a 8 minutes twisted cataclysmic track.
Sam:
Books:
Pierre Gripari:
I’m a big fan of classic children’s stories. Especially the tales of Pierre Gripari. He was a French writer, best known for his zany and wonderful stories for young people. Even if the content of the tale written to illustrate the clip for ‘The Bent Neck Lady’ is far removed from Gripari’s spirit, I think it was my love of this type of literature that gave me the idea of illustrating and personifying The Bent Neck Lady through fable or a tale. I found it charming that the listener could use his or her own imagination to bring this character to life.
John Fante:
Same here for John Fante. It’s not a direct influence, because his books are far from Point Mort’s universe. But I adore all his books, the outspokenness of its characters, their loser’s side, in its stories. And I think, somehow, my taste for pessimism, fatalism might come from it. Not an obvious reference, but sometimes inspirations are subtle.
Le Lac de Der:
Lac de Der is an artificial lake created in the 60s and 70s to protect Paris from flooding.
To create this body of water, hectares of forest, farms, ponds and, above all, three villages had to be destroyed. That’s what inspired me to write the song “Der”, to imagine what it must have been like for those people who were driven out of their homes overnight, forced to abandon their homes and their memories, to imagine their souls and their grief still echoing at the bottom of the lake.
Everything was destroyed except for a church, which was rebuilt on the edge of the lake.
