Fange – Perdition
Fange – Perdition
Throatruiner Records
Release Date: 23/02/24
Running Time: 30:06
Review by Dark Juan
Score: Several hundred quadrillion/10
Errrr ma Gehrddd, sner!!!
Yes, West Yorkshire is currently undergoing a small dusting of snow. It took Dark Juan and Mrs Dark Juan nearly an hour to traverse three miles due to the white stuff, mainly because a lorry had had a close meeting with a bus on Warley Road and it was therefore impassable. It is a little bit chilly and somewhat inclement out, and Dark Juan has been mightily cheered by the thought of the bottle of mulled wine from Christmas that he had forgotten about. I will be warming my cockles with that later and no mistake. Not even Hodgson Biological-Warfare wants to go out for his afternoon perambulations, and I can’t say I blame him. Moss The Boss has elected to hide beneath the armchair in Crow Cottage’s lounge and remain motionless in the vain hope that he has been forgotten about. He hasn’t, and frankly the little shit is going for a walk if he likes it or not because the tiny, tin-pot megalomaniac has been driving me absolutely potty recently.
I am a cruel master.
But cruel masters need cruel music to listen to, don’t they? What a fucking brilliant segue. I’m having that! Anyway, you don’t get much crueller than the “Bretagne Industrielle” of Nantes, Brittany (France for the people who don’t know that the Bretons are not all happy about being French) -based Fange. If you are a regular consumer of my nonsense, you will no doubt have recalled that Fange are now one of Dark Juan’s all-time favourite bands, being as they are unsurpassed at beautiful brutality. I even wrote about them in March last year (https://www.ever-metal.com/2023/03/14/fange-privation/ being the fabulous piece of descriptive writing I thus excreted in my excitement) and “Privation” was even in my top ten releases of 2023. Nevertheless, a new album has been provided by Fange for Dark Juan’s listening pleasure, called “Perdition”. Needless to say, it has been slapped on the Platter Of Splatter™ with both enthusiasm and alacrity, neither much of which Dark Juan normally displays. Just ask Mrs Dark Juan where DIY is involved. Or the Ever-Metal.com editorial team because Dark Juan treats deadlines as merely advisory at best.
“Césarienne Au Noir” is the opening track, and this is where Dark Juan’s limited French could get us into trouble already. As far as I know, a Césarienne is a Caesarean Section, and I simply don’t know whether there is an alternate meaning to the word in French, so I am backing slowly away from it smiling and with open hands so it can see that I am not armed. Anyway, the song is absolutely fucking magnificent, having the classic Fange sludginess and Industrial power, but with a more idiosyncratic, Electronic element to the sound that harks back to the times of the likes of Meat Beat Manifesto and GGFH, but hidden just underneath the colossal, spine-snapping, brain-breaking surface sound of Fange. There are few bands who can match them for sheer heaviness – the guitar sound on this album is masterful. Dark Juan has rarely heard guitars sound so fucking massive. Fange can shift tectonic plates just with their sound, and it is not a coincidence that there is currently new and exciting hot, geological action and rivers of lava in Iceland AT THE SAME TIME AS A NEW FANGE RELEASE in Dark Juan’s opinion. Yes, these Breton bruisers are responsible for unbalancing the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates and causing catastrophe on the Reykjanes peninsula simply by releasing a new album. Dark Juan is suitably impressed. Grindavik isn’t.
“Perdition” was conceived by the band as a kind-of successor to 2020’s “Poigne”, insofar as it ramps up the electronic Industrial jackhammering, allowing the almighty power of the riff to sink back somewhat in the overall sound of the record. However, do not be misinformed by this statement because the guitars on this album remove faces and the bass liquifies internal organs.
With ease.
Vocalist Matthias Jungbluth leaves you in no doubt about his intentions from the very first time he opens his throat. This demented frontman is out to kill us all with the primeval, vicious power of his roar and he’s not asking for any quarter. In fact, it appears he has decided that he is going to eviscerate us all simply by subjecting us to his ear-splitting, visceral vocal tumult.
It will be of little surprise to you all that Dark Juan is fucking LOVING this album right now. Whereas ‘Césarienne Au Noir’ was all damaged, mutilated Death Industrial loops and deranged roaring, ‘Toute Honte Bue’ is rather more considered slaughter. More cerebral than the first two tracks, the Industrial element of Fange’s sound is allowed to breathe rather than being assisted by the setting-concrete Sludge sound they normally employ.
The cover version of Bernard Lavilliers’ ‘La Haine’ is particularly worthy of note. The original song sounds very much like Andrew Lloyd-Webber being instructed to write an Electronic Industrial tune in the style of Leonard Cohen and is quite gigglesome in that regard although I will tell you a secret – Dark Juan is a secret fan of French Electropop. Anyway, Fange have turned this song into something truly monstrous, like the inexorable, slow grinding of spiked steel tank tracks crushing human skulls under the weight of 60-odd tons of a flame-spitting, matt black battlewagon belching 120mm high-explosive death and choking clouds of diesel fumes. Once again, Dark Juan appears to be consumed with warlike enthusiasm for Fange and their music.
‘Lèche-Béton’ changes the dynamic of the album again though, with the spooky, red-alert alarm blinking feel of the song being unsettling and raw-nerved, as the sound of sparking, fucked electronic circuitry crackles and fizzes behind the simple intertwining patterns of the guitar and bass, until it speeds up and the song turns into a kind of vastly superior, utterly bastardised version of Ministry at Big Al’s most visceral. Uncompromising does not even begin to cover the incredibly tightly focused sound of Fange on this album, which closes with ‘Désunion Sacrée’ featuring the pure, clear, beautiful vocal of Pencey Sloe’s Diane Pellotieri, juxtaposing the angelic sound of that woman’s voice with deep, rumbling male vocals and a slow-grinding, machine-like drone.
I was doing my best to not be too superlative about this album, but I can’t do it. It is fucking PERFECT. There isn’t a weak MOMENT on here, let alone a weak song and Fange’s avant-garde, idiosyncratic melding of Sludge, Death Metal and Industrial just does it for Dark Juan in a way that normally only orgies, absinthe and ALL THE DRUGS do. Dark Juan is officially blown the fuck away. They have an endless, uncompromising, skull-crushing wall of sound and Fange are that rarest of bands – they have never released a poor album and their star rises ever higher in the estimation of this Northern numpty.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Le système breveté d’évaluation des éclaboussures de sang Dark Juan pour mes merveilleux amis et lecteurs français et bretons. Une fois de plus, la France a conquis mon cœur, et Fange en particulier a montré que les Français pouvaient faire preuve de brutalité aussi bien que les Britanniques. Merci putain, nous sommes amis maintenant. Imaginez simplement la destruction si Fange et The Machinist faisaient des spectacles ensemble. Je vous aime tous de la part de ce francophile anglais frustré) awards Fange a score of several hundred quadrillion out of ten, this being an estimate mainly because Fange have utterly destroyed the Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System with their peerless, mechanical savagery. There was a massive bang, smoke everywhere and the dial which tells me the score shot off in search of interstellar life.
Thanks a fucking bunch, FANGE!
TRACKLISTING:
01. Césarienne Au Noir
02. Mauvais Vivant
03. Toute Honte Bue featuring Olivier Guinot (Lodges)
04. Foudres Fainéantes
05. La Haine (Cover version of Bernard Lavilliers)
06. Lèche-Béton
07. Désunion Sacrée featuring Diane Pellotieri (Pencey Sloe)
LINE-UP:
Antoine Perron – Bass, vocals
Benjamin Moreau – Guitars, vocals, machines
Matthias Jungbluth – Vocals, lyrics
Titouan le Gal – Guitars, additional vocals
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 said party. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
