"Aux Portes de la Crypte" initiates with rainfall, the sounds of knife sharpening, church bells, murmurs, a child's whimpering, coven-like group prayers, an unsettling haunted cathedral-inspired organ theme and Spiritus' hungered vocals. Blood-boiling guitars, howls and scratchy screams are the onset of leviathan sized title track "Crepuscule Hivernal Sans Fin sur les Terres de la Guerre"; a verbose name to match 26 minutes of creeping atmosphere of the penultimate track. Some parts consist of a weathered structure, beaten down into the ground to give off a muted, unbreathable atmosphere, and others, of the weather; rain, wind and the coldness of frost. Keyboard parts again add a gothic, sitting alone in an abandoned church in the dead of winter vibe. The black metal half of Neige et Noirceur always comes back, unleashed in the form of classically fuzzy, cold guitars, crisp drums and sandy throat screams. This track is unmercifully long and takes its toll though, the variation changes it to seem like many track strewn together. Lastly, "Hibernation" is a lurid end of amazingly themed horror. A goal of Spiritus on this release was to create creepy music, and while the previous tracks are dark, "Hibernation" achieves this scare. The approach and the atmosphere are right for a foreboding experience of hair-raising ambience without any black metal. Perfectly suiting a midnight stroll into an unknown part of town with heavy footsteps that emerge from out of nowhere and powerful background noise like a dark alley, supposedly empty.

_Crepuscule..._ shows, as has been shown time after time, that French (be it French-Canadian respectively) black metal is a genre unmatched. Norway may lay claim to the "true" grim and Satanic strains of metal (though South American bands are dangerously evil and may even top their Scandinavian brethren in that aspect); France and it seems, the French graced part of Canada, are black metal leaders in their own right. Neige et Noirceur ride the tail of a growing league of ambient / black bands that understand fright does not always come in the form of fang, nail or stinger, but could be a dark shape lurking behind, always disappearing when you look over your shoulder, only to swallow you whole when you turn your head back 'round.