Album & EP Reviews

Grave Pleasures – Plagueboys

Grave Pleasures – Plagueboys
Century Media Records
Release Date: 21/04/23
Running Time: 40:06
Review by Dark Juan
Several hundred quadrillions/10

“She’s the end of the world in the form of a girl.”

What a fucking chorus line that is. It also adequately describes the perfect woman for Dark Juan – someone extremely gorgeous who’s also a dab hand with everything from a dagger to a 155mm howitzer and has a really bad attitude and is skilled enough to kill from across a room with nothing but a breadstick and a chunk of sharpened parmesan.

That is not a random analogy. If you read the Fortean Times Book of Strange Deaths, you’ll find that an Italian gentleman was murdered by a spurned spouse in just that fashion, sans breadstick.

Grave Pleasures are the name of the band whose music is currently spinning upon the now infamous Platter of Splatter™ and they are exactly the kind of thing that makes Dark Juan scream for joy (if I was a demonstrative sort – instead I am seated in silence in my armchair and am covered in goose pimples instead). Hailing from Finland, where darker music normally takes the form of Black Metal bands wailing for help because they have got lost in a great, vast forest on a photo shoot and are currently being picked off one by one by the misanthropic spirit of that great, vast forest. Grave Pleasures are somewhat different to the lamenting of soon-to-be-lunch BM bands and have served up a delicious slice of Post-Punk, Gothic splendour that is so far up Dark Juan’s street it’s currently squatting in the spare bedroom of Crow Cottage and is sat contentedly building my Airfix CA-13 Boomerang aeroplane kit… 1:72nd scale, dontcha know.

Yes, for all of you that regularly read the spoutings of enthusiasm and rage and tortured metaphors of Dark Juan, you will undoubtedly remember that I am a child of Gothic Rock and Post-Punk. I am the archetypal Sad Old Goff™ who longs for the stylings of the Sisters of Mercy and the Jesus and Mary Chain to come back into the mainstream. Luckily for this Hellpriest, we have already been graced with a peach of a Post-Punk record this year by Britain’s Naut, and now we have the out and out Gothic Rock of Grave Pleasures to tickle the few remaining pleasure centres left in the rotting grey lump of flesh inside my head…

“Plagueboys” opens up with ‘Disintegration Girl’ which immediately gives us a Cure reference and gives us a pretty good idea of where the music will be going on the album, as well as having that fucking amazing chorus I referenced in the first paragraph of this review. The band effortlessly meld synth work with jangling, chiming 12-string guitars and the kind of growling, threatening, forward-in-the-mix bass that all good Post-Punk should have. The music is a sinuous, sumptuous melding of the deep sarcasm and Dystopian outlook of the Sisters of Mercy, the Pop and New Wave edge of The Mission and The Cure and the sheer heart-blood bleeding emotion of Echo and The Bunnymen. Indeed, the music too is very reminiscent of those Scouse miserablists crossed very much with the atmospherics of The Mish… ‘Heart Like A Slaughterhouse’ has the tongue-in-cheek, wry amusement of the lyrics of one Andrew Eldritch esquire if he had written the words to a Cure song, and the guitar work is soooooooooo Wayne Hussey it makes my old heart skip several beats with what passes for joy in my life. Grave Pleasures are not just Echo and The Bunnymen copyists though, oh no. ‘When The Shooting’s Done’ has a harder, darker edge than previous songs on the album with a black, tortured quality that really does make Dark Juan think of Ian Curtis and Joy Division’s bleak Post-Punk worldview complete with a pile driving bassline. ‘High On Annihilation’ is a strange chimera of The Cure and Joy Division and The Damned combined, all running riot around a candy-striped big top releasing all the big cats just so they can watch the indiscriminate slaughter of the audience. ‘Conspiracy Of Love’ has elements of The Damned at their most confusedly Gothic running riot around the song, and the kind of silken verbal venom of one A. Eldritch creeping around the lyrics and the title track ‘Plagueboys’ owes much to Siouxsie and The Banshees and Fields Of The Nephilim as much as it does to Echo and The Bunnymen. ‘Tears On The Camera Lens’ is another smorgasbord of Gothic classic references – the bass thrusting lasciviously forward in the mix in the manner of the Sisters and Joy Division and the vocal delivery all Ian McCulloch’s barely contained emotional outpouring. ‘Society Of Spectres’ has a harder, more Hard Rock edge that calls the Sisters of Mercy’s “Vision Thing” to mind rather strongly, effortlessly melded to the huge choruses and jangling guitar of The Mission.

Production-wise, this is one of the most perfect things Dark Juan has ever heard. Although the bass is very forward in the mix, it never overpowers the rest of the instruments and the drums are resonant and pleasingly meaty throughout and the vocals sit just where they need to be, a focal point for the band as a whole but not sounding like the singer is an ego-tripping bastard (hello, Kory Clarke. We haven’t had a Warrior Soul record for a while, have we?) who just wants to drown the band out because he’s the fucking frontman. Everything is… just so. It’s fucking perfect. Even the lyrics – dark, Dystopian poetry that caresses you with memorable words and massive choruses and hooks before it sinks fangs into your throat and drains you dry. I want to cry at how fucking PERFECT everything is.

Normally this is where I’d come up with things I don’t like because I am supposed to be a critic. There is not a single thing I dislike about this album. I fucking love it to death. I’ll be humming every single chorus in my grave. I will be boring every single friend I have about just how SUBLIME Grave Pleasures are. Mrs Dark Juan has already got bored of my enthusiasm (because it is noisy) and gone to the spare room to create her eldritch embroidered horrors in peace from the old Goff rampaging around the lounge doing the old Goff hand dance thing.

This is 40 minutes of pure sex. What a band. What an album! What a fucking EXPERIENCE.

The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Patentoitu Dark Juan -veriroiskeluokitusjärjestelmä suomalaisille lukijoillemme!) can’t help itself and awards Grave Pleasures several hundred quadrillions/10 for a record of such sublime, sensuous pleasure and Gothic magnificence it makes the Rating System want to break out the leather strides, big-ass New Rock boots, a frilly shirt, top hat and frock coat out of storage and go and haunt graveyards looking for pale and interesting women to hunt down and seduce. I can’t see how Grave Pleasures will ever top this.

TRACKLISTING:
01. Disintegration Girl
02. Heart Like A Slaughterhouse
03. When The Shooting’s Done
04. High On Annihilation
05. Lead Balloons
06. Imminent Collapse
07. Society Of Spectres
08. Conspiracy Of Love
09. Plagueboys
10. Tears On The Camera Lens

LINE-UP:
Valtteri Arino – Bass
Juho Vanhanen – Guitar
Mat McNerney – Vocals 
Aleksi Kiiskilä – Guitar
Rainer Tuomikanto – Drums

LINKS:

Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.

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