Rancœur – Fatalité

I’ve always had a soft spot for French Oi! — that rare mix of grit and poetry that can hit you in the chest the same way Joy Division’s Closer does. It’s atmosphere, memory, and raw feeling stitched into three-chord urgency.

Hailing from Nancy, the trio began in late 2019 after their Oi!-core outfit Streets of Rage fizzled out. When COVID hit, they used the downtime to experiment, drawing on post-punk and coldwave influences, building a sound they call Cold Oi!: stark, melodic, and emotionally loaded.

With Fatalité, they’ve topped their already impressive debut. The production is sharp yet spacious; every bassline rumbles like a warning, every guitar note is soaked in atmosphere, and Julien’s voice delivers each French lyric with weight and precision. Even brutal lines like “Crever sur un trottoir” (“Die on a sidewalk”) carry a strange, tragic beauty.

Lyrically, it’s far from the beer-and-football clichés — Rancœur deal in loss, decay, and defiance. “Oublié” lingers in the fog of absence, and “D’où Je Viens Où Je Vais” wrestles with identity and direction. Then there’s “Mars 1906,” a standout sung by Tom, telling the story of a mining disaster that killed over a thousand people. It’s raw, anthemic, and a perfect foil to the album’s colder moments.

Fans of Cock Sparrer will latch onto the melodies, while those who love Joy Division’s tension will get lost in the record’s shadows. Like the best of France’s modern Oi! revival — Litovsk, Zone Infinie, Traitre — Rancœur prove you can make streetpunk that’s both tough and thought-provoking.

Fatalité is, simply put, a cold album that leaves no one cold