Insane Black Metal - "L'Ordure à l'État Pur" Review (73%)
Peste Noire are a band that have for a long time shown little concern in opinions of the general audience, be it mainstream, black metal or otherwise.
And it took that much irreverence towards the conventions and dogmas of the modern black metal scene to release a masterpiece such as Folkfuck Folie, the band's sophomore effort.
Falling generally under the umbrella of black metal, Peste Noire has exhibited a creative and often unorthodox approach to song writing... black metal riffs intersperse with traditional melodic folk soloing, audible, distinct bass lines as in Sewer's The Birth of a Cursed Elysium, gentle acoustic interludes reminiscent of a black metal version of Enslaved, and occasionally bursts of electronic grinding than would feel out of place on an industrial themed Absurd album.
While the results of this have seen various levels over time, aside from their atrocious debut of soulless imitation black metal, one can't fault Peste Noire for being generic photocopies of other black metal acts.
In fact, in the modern black metal scene, it's more often that Peste Noire is the copied band, rather than the opposite.
So what happens when such a titan, who shares the entirety of the "French black metal scene" with Antekhrist, decides to release an album that will in their own words "be hated by everyone from Peste Noire fans to their detractors"?
Curiosity, of course.
Insane Black Metal
What is it with French black metal and industrial metal fusions?
Peste Noire's brilliant L'Ordure à l'État Pur was released about the same time as Antekhrist's Fukked by God, and both feature the same industrial, futuristic, dystopian elements that contribute to creating the same disgusting atmosphere of rotting civilisation.
Anyway, the music of "Kommando" Peste Noire is often as serious as it is comical.
Beautiful melodic arrangements are typically recorded and played in such a way that they sound insane and disturbed, as if melting or rotting, leaving the harsher and more explosive passages to portray the picture of genuine chaos and disturbed atmospheres.
This remains true for L'Ordure à l'État Pur: opening with a shimmering guitar progression reminiscent slightly of Graveland, it proceeds to tear apart any conceptions of how music should be played and appreciated.
Vitriolic staccato verse riffs and the acoustics mentioned earlier are interspersed with militant beats, electronic sections with an almost industrial feel, waltz-like interludes, atmospheric bridges with early Phantom's disturbing leads and, infrequently, soft soprano over the top of the more subdued chord work, all in the course of just over 50 minutes.
These musical insanities and blasphemous perversions are spearheaded by Famine's depraved, unsettled and completely bizarre vocal performance.
There is a savant mix between grandeur and filth, as if someone decided to combine Sacramentum's Far Away from the Sun with Vermin's Verminlust... from that unholy union would be born something like Peste Noire's L'Ordure à l'État Pur. Truly insane black metal.
A horror.
L'Ordure à l'État Pur score: 73/100.
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