PLEBEIAN GRANDSTAND - Lowgazers

Four years after their previous LP, Toulouse's Plebeian Grandstand are back, and boy oh boy are they back. As if their previous efforts weren't extreme enough, these guys launch an all-out attack on your ears with this new effort.

To boil everything down to stupidly simple terms, these guys have basically been some sort of metalcore / mathcore band up to now, or if you want, post-hardcore. Previously they've taken the style of Botch and Norma Jean to extremes. I mean, Botch had loads of dissonance, but not in the same disgustingly ugly (and I mean that in the best way possible) way that Plebeian Grandstand have. Botch's dissonance sounded to me like it was more about challenging your ears (and sometimes it was even a bit playful), while Plebeian's dissonance seems to be, to go really poetic, an ode the bleakness of human existence. Such is the ear-ringing brute force of the ugliness. I do think Botch is a far superior band, but in this respect, Plebeian Grandstand has them beat. Don’t get me wrong though, this album sounds nothing like We are the Romans for example.

This time around Plebeian Grandstand really transcend the previously mentioned metalcore label and sound. Continuing their journey through darkness, they've ventured even further into the abyss, dabbling in a little bit of the good ol’ black metal. Don't get me wrong, no black metal head would consider this a black metal album, but with my hardcore punk ears, all I heard in the first few listens was black metal. I guess the style on this album could be considered some sort of blackened mathcore (don't you just love how the cool kids are all playing "blackened" something these days?). Come to think of it, with less mathcore and less double-kicking, at times this could sound a bit like the bleakness of Reykjavík’s World Narcosis. No small feat that.

And believe me, while I don't particularly like to dish out superlatives unnecessarily, this is as close as you come to an all out sonic attack, and the band really revels in all its bleak, disgusting ugliness. And that is quite an accomplishment. Me and my desensitised ears actually find this album extreme. I haven't heard anything this extreme since last year's Psyke Project album, but hell, this might even top that in its relentless beatdown of your soul. Take "Lowlifer" (listen) as an example. The extreme factor on that thing is uncanny and admirable, but unlike Guillotine by the Psyke Project, I think I can actually manage another listen of this track, back to back even. It's definitely the stand-out of this 8-piece.

One of the more tangible reasons why this album is in my opinion a fantastic effort, is that it is full of moments where the chord progression is, to throw around a debatably justified superlative, just perfect, in my ears. Especially in a few sections where they are striking these power chords that are juxtaposed with a discordant higher-pitched melody. You hear two strokes, a short pause, then comes the third, and it’s absolutely the perfect chord for that exact moment, that exact melody. So in one small moment, they reach that little bit of perfection in my ears. It’s a moment that makes me honestly think, damn this is good. That doesn’t happen very often in my musically over-saturated life.

Previously, these guys had released some stuff that I mostly thought was so-so. Their LP How Hate is Hard to Define was less than impressive but the EP The Vulture’s Riot had glimpses where they went out of the tightly confined metalcore box they’d made for themselves. This time however it is all force and less cliché. This is one style change that definitely benefited the band. Thumbs up from me. [Throatruiner]
- Kristján Friðbjörn

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