With artwork best hidden from the kids, the creepy Pensees Nocturnes have produced a darkly compelling black metal concept album in the form of Grand Guignol Orchestra. Housed (as we have come to expect from the wonderful Les Acteurs De L’Ombre Production) in a digi-pack complete with a beautifully designed booklet that allows the circus theme to run rampant, the album features ten tracks that vary wildly in style and delivery (and with run times ranging from just over a minute to seven minutes in length), drawing comparisons to the likes of Mr Bungle in the process.
Opening with the brief, scene-setting ambience of Un trop plein d’rouge, a sinister piece of music that draws the listener in, the band soon head into the lengthy Deux bals dans la tete, a hyperactive and gruelling combination of Mr Bungle insanity cross-bred with the intensity of early Emperor. It’s utterly unique and, if you’d thought you’d heard every possible permutation of black metal, think again! With the sounds of a circus orchestra slowly disintegrating under a barrage of brutal blast beats and seething guitar, deux bals dans la tete is the sound of a wheezing, dilapidated clown succumbing to a murderous rage as the band play on. Pensees Nocturnes don’t make things any easier with the unhinged Poil de lunei, which brings to mind a Gallic Dog Fashion Disco, the instrumentation stretched so far from conventional tuning, that when it devolves into something approaching a semblance of normality, it’s almost a shock. Truly a voyage into the unknown, you literally never know what’s going to happen from one second to the next, let alone between songs, and it is fantastic to review a band so in love with the outré. Everything segues into the claustrophobic chamber of mirrors that is L’Alpha Mal, a grunting, grinding, dizzying nightmare that distorts and destroys the listener’s feeble grip on reality over the course of six, uncomfortable minutes. The first side ends with another short piece, Letrangorium, which has a Primus vibe to it, albei filtered through a lens of deathly mayhem.
Opening the second act Les valseuses sees things take a dirtier, nastier turn, the guitars raging harder, the circus elements spiralling into insanity as blast beats relentlessly batter the listener. With awkward tempo shifts and unhinged blasts of big-top noise, we’re out of Mr Bungle territory and into the no man’s land inhabited by Fantomas. Things continue the savage slide into depravity with Gauloises ou Gitanes? a track which allows a choice between two of France’s most pungent tobacco offerings as eerie laughter erupts from the speakers and the band engage a touch of the Mariachi because, well, why wouldn’t you? Things take a turn for the funereal on the whimsical, downbeat Comptine a boire, a sample-ridden, slow-paced trudge that is gleefully morbid. With the album reaching its end, things take a turn for the heavier with the operatic antics of anis maudit drawing on jazz, death metal, black metal and everything in between. It’s an album highlight and the band delight in throwing the listener off kilter with the dense stylistic twists and turns. Of course, with the album sequenced very much like a theatrical piece, the record concludes with the epic Triste Sade, a seven-minute curtain call that brings the disc to a suitably over-the-top end as the band finally release the listener, shaking and traumatised, back into the real world.
It takes a special kind of record to suck the listener away from reality and place them in an alternate universe run exclusively by imagination, but that’s what Pensees Nocturnes have successfully conjured up with Grand Guignol Orchestra. As the guitars face off against well-played jazz and the sounds of the Big Top echo around the room, so the smell of rotting popcorn and spoiled hotdogs seems to permeate the air. It’s a dark, hypnotic, bizarre record and, to be quite honest, it won’t be for everyone. For those who prefer their metallic thrills more straight forward, the insane digressions are as liable to as irritating as they can be enticing, but for those who like a genuine journey into the unknown, then this remarkable record is a must. 8.5
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