Bowels of Suffering – [B.o.S] 2.0
Bowels of Suffering – [B.o.S] 2.0
Wormholedeath Records
Release Date: 08.11.24
Running Time: 44:45
Review by Dark Juan
Score: 9/10
Nope, I still haven’t gone anywhere. I’d apologise, but you are choosing to read this, aren’t you?
I am Dark Juan, and I write about music. Well, I am supposed to, but frequently go wandering off the path and chat absolute bollocks about whatever has distracted me this time. You can blame neurodiversity for this. I can’t help myself. I would apologise but I make no fucking excuses for who or what I am. I spend my entire working life masking the fuck out of myself and I am not doing it here as well.
This, as usual, has no relevance to what I am currently supposed to be doing so allow me to drag myself back on track before I start wondering just why dogs have regional accents…
The Platter of Splatter ™ is activated. There is a record upon it. And, yet again, because it appears that I am able to sniff out a record by a French band merely by reading their name in a list of hundreds, we have hopped across the English Channel to the grand city of Nantes, close to my old stomping ground of Brittany, to give a band called Bowels of Suffering the benefit of my critical inspection.
Now, Bowels of Suffering play Industrial Metal, but it isn’t Industrial in the shiny, polished sense of the word, like Ministry’s later output, for example, but it has more of a smoke and carcinogen-belching aesthetic – Steampunk melded to spacefaring. They very much operate in the same universe as British band Spectral Darkwave, where teams of black faced stokers feed the boilers of generational arkships powered by coal and muscle power, where worn and cracked leather pipes leak scalding steam and casualties are casually accepted as part of the game and engineers race around trying to repair boilers and massive fucking mill engine pistons powering the life support and massive turrets belch huge brass shells targeted by people with mechanical computers and difference engines. However, BoS lack the visceral vocal for that British band and opt for cut glass, angelic female vocals (Géraldine Gadaut being the voice of Gaïa on this album, it being the story of how shitty humankind is, how we fuck the world and how make soldiers out of domestic pets if we had the chance, and the war that would ensue if the spirit of the Earth decided to fight us. However, there’s a little more nuance, as Gaïa starts this one by weaponising wild animals and giving them consciences. However, the wild animals hijack cyborgs to use as their weapon as their consciences won’t allow them to fight us. They shouldn’t have had such moral scruples. Humans really are shit. My dogs are lovers, not fighters) and this is backed up by the band’s promo pics and names, where the band are dressed in leather and frock coats which would not be out of place on a Napoleonic Admiral of the Fleet on the deck of his ship of the line.
Now, it should be noted that Dark Juan fucking loves a bit of whimsy and make-believe with his music and having names like the Marquis de Lanuit scores bonus points as far as I am concerned.
The music itself is choppy, heavily-produced Industrial Metal where the emphasis is on the guitars, but this has a counterpoint of some Electronic wizardry beneath it which revels in roaming from the face-stompingly martial to the most leather and lace clad with outlandishly massive footwear of Gothic music, and this raises it somewhat up from the norm as far as Industrial Metal is concerned as that style of music can be found to be a bit po-faced and serious and intent only on machinelike pummelling, whereas Bowels of Suffering bring in a humanistic, febrile element that allows the music a different form of power. They even manage to fit in some violin on ‘Seit Dem Staub Am Stein’. The Marquis of Lanuit has a pleasing bark of a voice and the whole band are tighter than a duck’s arse, and the music has some interesting stuff being slung at it – ‘Tribal Tek Sin’ for example, has everything from what sounds like a full orchestra to a Hammond organ playing the cheesiest of porn movie motifs, to solemn strings and contrapuntal rhythms. It’s a bit of a musical journey and there’s a real feeling of four giggling, very drunk Frenchmen wondering just how far they can push their luck with their music and them amping it up another notch when they discover a fucking marimba in the corner of the studio or something…
“Hé, Marquis!! Je viens de trouver cette vielle derrière mon ampli!”
“Putain de genial, Baron Thomas! On le mettra dans cette chanson et ça ira très bien avec les guitares Rammstein et le clavecin que j’ai trouvé en bas!”
Yeah. There’s an entire conversation going on my head now, in French, and it is a) very comedic, and b) much too long to write here because it’s a right ball ache to change my keyboard to a French one and back again. Also, it should be stated that this is a French language album and you’re either going to need to speak French or be a dab hand at translating on the fly in order to make sense of any of it if you aren’t Francophone.
Yes, it is safe to say that Dark Juan has been royally entertained by Bowels of Suffering. It is time to hand this motherfucker over to the Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Le système breveté d’évaluation des éclaboussures de sang Dark Juan pour mes bons amis d’outre-Manche! Chaque jour, la vie en France me manque. Pauvre de moi. Je souffre beaucoup du manque de pain frais, encore chaud du four, d’Elodie chez le boulanger du coin à Lignol. Et la bière que son mari y brasse aussi. Cela me manque même de soudoyer le maire du village avec de nombreuses boîtes de chips de l’usine Brets où je travaillais. Il n’a jamais eu de whisky parce que je l’aime trop) has now stopped lamenting about Elodie’s incredible flutes (stop it!) and is happy to award Bowels of Suffering 9/10 for an album and image that has entertained the hell out of me.
TRACKLISTING:
01. 618MT
02. Central 013
03. Catacombes
04. D4rk Sanctuary
05. Deus X Makina
06. Fact-X
07. In the Name of God
08. Metacog
09. Neo Divinity
10. Saddest Mind
11. Seit Dem Staub Am Stein
12. Tribal Tek Sin
13. XX-Y
14. Gaïa
LINE-UP:
Marquis de Lanuit – Lead vocals
Baron Thomas Von Letscher – Guitars, keys, orchestrations & programming
Lord Matthieu Morand – Guitars, keys, orchestrations & programming
Tsar Andrzej – Bass & backing vocals
Géraldine Gadaut is the voice of Gaïa
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.
