Blame the internet if you’re a purist, but black metal has falling into music genres like mad for a long ass time now. You can hardly peruse a Bandcamp without running into the words “black metal” or “crust” (or a myriad of other senseless genres that often don’t fit). The alchemy of the genre was inevitable with its cult (sorry, “kvlt”) status. And believe it or not, not all of it has been bad.
Plebeian Grandstand is predominately black metal unit out of Toulouse, France. Four years ago they unleashed their first full length How Hate Is Hard To Define with only two split EPs in between, one with Bone Dance (an unfortunate loss)/Divider, and another with Cortez. Fusing a good deal of black metal and hardcore on their previous full length, their latest offering Lowgazers shoots to aim for something a little more focused.
Fans of the band are immediately going to notice as switch in sound. Plebeian Grandstand have adapted a more straightforward approach with Lowgazers, something that immediately sounds like a bluesier buzz saw. The opening onslaught “Thvst” is an absolutely vicious, burning beast, breathing into the air slowly and then swinging open the doors of chaos. Everything opens with explosive energy and blistering epic composition. When this song blasts, it is heavy and frothing at the mouth.
However, it is once we get past the first track that we start to get a feeling of similarity between the songs. A sort of mono begins to sink in. “Endless Craving” and “Flail in the Bliss” just don’t feel that different when all’s said and done. They’re both tracks that slow down and speed up, mixing in the dominantly black metal sound along with melodic bits and blasts. Yeah, that sounds general but they don’t feel terribly different from each other. Their composition just isn’t terribly impressive, technical bits aside. They’re not bad, they just blend.
Perhaps the weirdest set is “Relief of Troth” and “Svn in Your Head”, both of which sound like introductions to songs and come on one after the other. They really felt more like something one would find in an album intro. Together they form a six minute building track that leads into “Aimless Roaming”, one of the better, more fevered tracks; up there with “Thvst.”
“Mvrk Diving” is the best song on the album and easily the best closer one could ask for. The piece is dissonant, vicious, catchy, fast, and incredibly heavy. The blast beat is vicious, the breakdown is shrill and the flow of the song is engaging. It is, bottom-line, the most standout piece on the record and by far the most frenzied. If they play this live (and they damn well better) it’ll probably blow the venue the fuck up.
Overall, Lowgazers is a pretty good album despite my bitching. It’s got a nasty edge to it and brings a perpetual slaughter to the speakers. Unfortunately the album doesn’t feel like it bears much variety. Yes, it delves into sludgy bits and still retains a metallic hardcore-ish feel sometimes but for the most part this feels like a black metal album. It definitely seems like Plebeian Grandstand tore a page out of the Deathspell Omega book. Lowgazers is plenty technical and a pretty good offering but isn't without flaw. Definitely worth checking out though.
7.5/10
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