Rating: 9.0
Country: France
Genre: Black Metal
Record Label: De Profundis/ Transcendental Creations
Release Date: 2009
Track list:
1. Neire Peste
2. La Mesniee Mordrissoire
3. Ballade Cuntre les Anemis de la France - De François Villon
4. Concerto Pour Cloportes
5. La France Bouge - Par K.P.N. (Chant de l'Action Française)
6. A la Mortaille!
7. Vespre
8. Rance Black Metal de France
9. Requiem Pour Nioka (Á un Berger-Allemand)
10. Soleils Couchants - De Verlaine
Band Website: Peste Noire |
Peste Noire - Ballade cuntre lo Anemi Francor
Famine - vocals, bass, guitar
Ragondin - bass
A. Julia - drums
Sainte Audrey-Yolande de la Molteverge - "rock and soprano voices," piano, hammond organ
Albums like this are why I hate issuing numerical scores. I gave the last Peste Noire a pretty solid score, something like an 8.5, and now out comes an album that makes the last one look like a 4 or 5 in comparison. It's enough to make me question my own credibility. Well, good for the band, bittersweet for me.
Let's get this out of the way right now, because it's not my job to feed you bullshit: this album only contains five real songs. These actual songs are playfully sandwiched between an array of modestly intriguing intermezzi--sometimes wistful and longing, other times slightly warbling and warped, still other times straight-up neoclassical death lullabies--but the amount of real material here is scarcely enough to fill a long EP. The good news, though, is that these five real songs are the most maturely developed in this band's career. Still, you may want to download instead of buy. I don't know, I don't give a shit.
Anyway, I've already seen this album described as "black 'n roll," which is occasionally accurate given its wealth of stomping, garagey riff workouts, but misleading. It certainly is more rocking than previous stuff, more of a mid-paced black metal/crust punk fusion than the doleful black metal of previous releases, but the band's elegant lead guitarwork remains as overstated as usual, at times floridly sprinkling the album with an intimate janglepop sensibility that will likely find friends with ears anywhere but in metal circles. (For those who can't quite grasp the subtext here: yes, I fucking think that's a good thing.) Meanwhile, an offputting air of absurdism dominates with Famine's semi-pisstake vocal performance; vomitous hacking twists into distorted croons, and even the grating tone of poorly played harmonica enters the equation at one point. B*U*T: these elements are implemented in a way that's fun and dramatic rather than overly carnivalesque or distracting.
This band possesses genuine, poetic musical talent, spews filth from the heart, and never budges from their outsider approach to black metal--but at this same time, this isn't music that's just about being the most technical, the most "true," the most weird, or whatever; it is what it is, and in this stand-apart attitude, it channels a perfectly sublime idiocy--at times bordering on aching banality--that's more honest and sensual than most of us would probably like to concede, given the band's sketchy politics. This is top hat-wearing, lewd, effeminate black metal that lives to flamboyantly contradict itself; Peste Noire are the fucking Oscar Wilde of black metal, except instead of anal sex they love arpeggios. Get off your dick bicycle, stop taking yourself so seriously and listen to this or I'll reach my hand into the internet, through your screen and titpunch you through your sweaty Devourment shirt, ok?
July 26, 2009
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