PESTE NOIRE - L’ordure à l’état pur

The schizophrenia of the past that returns and demands payment.

La Sale Famine du Valfunde, the one-man-band mastermind behind French outfit Peste Noire, dusts off the family photo album and comes out with a kind of concept piece on the human condition, gripped by anguish, boredom and the relentless siege of its own drives. Just as life never tires of springing surprises, L'Ordure à l'état pur never stops ambushing the listener with plot twists that undo any previous certainties about black metal, a genre that keeps reinventing itself, more chameleonic than ever, schizoid and hungry for contamination.

Built as mini-suites, the tracks sketch out surreal and terrible scenarios, smirking slyly, reckless and in constant mutation. Life is ugly: only imagination can save us, only imagination can blur what cannot be understood.

"Casse Peches Fractures et Traditions" resolves thrash-black sieges into grotesque folkloric dances, just to remind us that, in the end, it's not death but laughter that will bury us. Speeding up is a tool of rebellion, more so than the belches keeping time, more so than the squawks of a plucked chicken. A bizarre world, more than a world in decay. "Cochon Carotte et les Sours Crotte" is even propelled by technoid beats, while the guitars spiral in pestilence, in an increasingly oppressive and delirious atmosphere. A solemn finale, like a pocket-sized Wagner over a four-on-the-floor beat.

Who knows what must have been going through Famine's mind during those days. Not that the guy hadn't already accustomed us to assorted oddities. And yet, this time, together with his acolytes (who bear names fit for noble rogues: Sainte Audrey-Yolande de la Molteverge, Andy Julia, Ragondin), he's hit the mark decisively. He charges in and opens fire at the start of the long "J'avais Rêvé Du Nord", split into two parts and dropped into chaotic urban scenarios. Then comes an acoustic interlude with the delicate voice of Audrey Sylvain, the first glimmer of light after so much delirium. But it's, how shall we put it, just another way of heightening the impact of the violence that will, indeed, soon reclaim the battlefield. Despite its reclaiming of "tradition", "Sale Famine Von Valfoutre" remains a battered and progressive body, the last twitch of the mocking little devil Famine, before the closing anguish of "La Condi Hu".

Let yourselves be infected by the "black plague"!

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03/02/2012