Plebeian Grandstand - Rien ne suffit

Angry Metal Guy 90

Rien ne suffit: nothing is enough. For Plebeian Grandstand, it might as well be a motto. The Toulouse have made their career defying categorization, and pushing each release to be something new, something more. How Hate is Hard to Define set a bar for blackened mathcore that no other record has come close to clearing, only for the band to sink into sludgy, dissonant black metal with Lowgazers. That muddy reek was fired with death metal oppression to make the gleaming False Highs, True Lows, and now, with Rien ne Suffit, it is shattered. Plebeian Grandstand have smashed their sound and rearranged the shards into a transfixing mosaic, mortared in concrete noise.

Rien ne suffit leaks into existence, spilling out “Masse critique” in an oily burble. Ivo Kaltchev begins an asymmetric beat that dissolves into flailing fills—and then repeats. Perfectly. Again and again he plays this impossible, tumorous rhythm, locked in step with a stomping bass synth and accompanied by Adrien Broué’s phlegmatic howls. They congeal into a wax of screams and noise. Minutes later, Kaltchev skips through beats in the spaces between outbursts of a roaring, sputtering synth in “À droite du démiurge, à gauche du néant,” beating out a meandering middle path between free jazz and Frontierer. Here the effect is mesmeric; the unpredictable rhythms and jarring synth crows are unlike anything Plebeian Grandstand have created before, yet something it seems impossible for other artists to conjure. Just after, though, “Tropisme” handles the synthesis with less care. The pairing of Broué’s manic screeches with a loose breakcore backing is abstract but no more interesting than a hundred other metal bands’ brief forays into noise or power electronics.

“Tropisme” wouldn’t be such a noticeable blemish were it not subsumed in the best avant-garde metal album since Imperative Imperceptible Impulse. Rien ne suffit seems to continuously challenge itself. Contumelious guitar lines race through blasting sections only to spill out in acrid arpeggios, their harsh, brassy timbre reflected by yet fouler synth tones. Weeping synthesizers slick the walls surrounding thunderous bass dirges. Guitarist, Simon Chaubard accompanies dense rhythms with the same sparse, ghastly leads that propelled Lowgazers and False Highs, True Lows, but even these are fractured by sudden shifts in meter and tone. “Angle Mort,” is the record’s most familiar piece, an unendurable shriek of caustic black metal, doubled in strength by brassy synths. It intensifies until it peels apart, snapping through phrases and tempos before bowing into polite applause.

Performances across the board are electrifying. Singer Adrien Broué commands even more attention than on previous albums, which he performed with such conviction that, not understanding more than a few lyrics, I felt completely compelled to agree with him. On Plebeian Grandstand’s first francophone release, the feeling is even more intense. Likewise, drummer Ivo Kaltchev proves inescapable when playing, absolutely inundating listeners in blast beats yet remarkably inventive between them. But possibly most crucial to the record’s success is engineer Amaury Sauvé, credited here along with the rest of the band for the album’s music and lyrics in addition to its production. I recall Kaltchev telling me how important he was to the band in making False Highs, True Lows when I spoke with him before their show in Chicago supporting the release, and I have no doubt that this powerful reconstruction of Plebeian Grandstand’s sound would be impossible without him.

As Chaubard echoes the three-note “Masse Critique” motif at the close of “Aube,” I’m drawn to consider Rien ne suffit as a whole. It is the product of well-earned ambition and executed with great care, faltering only at its furthest edges. Almost every moment of its music is as wonderfully evocative as Olivier Lolmède’s cover art, which reframes an ancient creative urge as a destructive and tragic force. Without a doubt, then this is Plebeian Grandstand’s most difficult and most accomplished release, remarkably successful in both integration and disintegration, successfully merging the band with a dense orchestra of new sounds. What more could you want?

Rating: 4.5/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Debemur Morti Productions
Websites: facebook.com/plebeiangrandstand | plebeian-grandstand.com | plebeiangrandstand.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: November 19th, 2021

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