If you hadn't heard, I wasn't Lowgazers biggest fan. In the end I thought it was an alright album but it never grabbed me. Not the way it grabbed oodles of other people and throttled their throats. And on that end I wasn't sure how to approach False Highs, True Lows. So permit me to open this review with a complaint: goddamn, I wish this album was longer.
Thrity-five-minutes is usually enough to sate me. Hell, I sometimes feel full after fifteen-minutes of pure adrenaline pummeling. But the French quartet Plebeian Grandstand have delivered it here. False Highs, True Lows is carnivorous and frothing, teeming with black metal and metallic hardcore influences that leaves almost no room to breathe.
Plebeian Grandstand lead you in nicely enough, you can give them that. The thirty second intro Mal du Siècle isn't doesn't strangle you. It's like a butler escorting you into a torture chamber with all curtsies. It's once “Low Empire” gets on that the band slams you into an iron maiden and begins screaming into your ear. The album is fucking evil sounding. There's no nice way to describe it since the band has no interest in playing nice. And “Low Empire” is just the beginning of the beginning of the aural torture.
There's actually a fantastic balance of slowness and aggression splattered throughout. It's the melding of this that makes the album come so completely unhinged. The band never feels like they're moving on any predictable scale. The track “Volition” is a slower, more tormented track that pumps adrenaline constantly. It's never stable; never feeling like it's reaching any sort of balance. Like much the rest of the album, it's feels crooked and angry.
Then again, nothing in Plebeian Grandstand plays by any rules, you could say. Guitarist Simon, for example, is often more focused on playing leads and progressions with no rhythm guitarist to speak of save for bassist Olivier Lolmède. Adrien's vocals go from whispers and growls to shouts and tortured screams without any instrumental cue. And Ivo's drumming is…just fucking bestial.
Though I made the complaint of a short album to kick off this review, there is one track in general that, after around 100 listens (I've put this on at least twice a day for the last two months, no I'm not exaggerating), really lets the dust settle. The seven-and-a-half-minute “Tame the Shapes” is a break from the chaotic frustration. The track is pure radiating ambiance that would have worked great for a minute or two. But coming off the wings of “Oculi Lac”, the album's best track and one of the most aggressive, it leave a severe case of whiplash and too much time to work out the kinks. I guess you could say it's really tame. Well, up until it's lead in to the track finale. But that comes way, way later.
Regardless, False Highs, True Lows is anything but a false high for Plebeian Grandstand. The recording quality of this album is as gorgeous as it is evil sounding. It can't be stressed enough how utterly maddening this album sounds. It's a marriage of Deathspell Omega and Converge, but with a core black metal flavor. Plebeian Grandstand's taste for madness has only gotten stronger since their last release. It's their strongest release to date. I, again, just wish it were longer. Good luck topping this, guys.
Score: 9/10
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opbmzhbLIT4[/youtube]
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