Project For Bastards (and if ever there was an apt name…) is a French outfit, hailing from Lille, dealing in extremity. Influenced by everything unholy (grind, crust, death metal, thrash etc.) we’ll call them grind for the sake of simplicity and certainly the speed at which they dish out their anthems of hate – fourteen songs in a mere twenty-four minutes – does much to support such an assertion. Other than that, PFB don’t really offer much in terms of detail, preferring to remain shrouded in semi-anonymity (the band’s Facebook page at least offers up their first names), and let the music do the talking…
Well, I said “talking”, but PFB don’t really talk. They scream, rant and spit in your face as a catastrophic clusterfuck of blast beats rain down upon you. Prelude may wrongfoot you with a corrosive riff drawn straight from the halls of doom, but rest assured that this is nothing more than a scene-setting sonic nightmare, and by the time the 90 second track has hit the half way point, Yuss is already working his way around the drum kit like some sort of human octopus as twisted samples juxtapose Hitler, George W. bush and god knows who else. The listener just about manages to get a handle on everything that is being thrown at them by the time that the ferocious Son Of The Goat detonates like an early napalm Death track, and you’ll think a riot’s broken out in your living room. Anchored by Kingsize’s bass, it’s a lightning assault on the senses that pales in comparison to the literally-titled 37 Seconds Of Turbulence and the barely-longer All Dead, both of which threaten to blow out your speaker cones despite the brevity of their brutality. At just a hair over two minutes, Baby sits as one of only four songs that breaks into what PFB clearly view as epic length. Based around a syrupy sludge riff, Baby is the soundtrack to the horror movie in your head, the rumbling bass and hyper-distorted guitars vying to do the most damage as you stumble away as quickly as you can, bleeding and disoriented. Talk Shit, delightful title notwithstanding, is a creeping grind assault that slows the pace just enough to deliver ever greater levels of ferocity, whilst We’re Pathetic sees the band’s love of thrash exercised in a seething cauldon of hatred, although it’s Chris’ unhinged vocal performance that steals the show, and one can only imagine the bloody carnage he left splattered across the pop shield whilst tracking this one.
Adopting an uncomfortable, slightly paranoid tone with off-kilter guitars, Krust is a menacing album highlight and then we’re taken to a darker place altogether as Chris introduces us to what’s In My Head (hint: run away!), a relentless grind assault that ramps up the savagery to such levels that it feels at least twice its actual runtime. Similar in both tone and pace, Chaos Solution blazes past, only for the coruscating death metal of Nosebleed to come racing out of the speakers like Raging Speedhorn on steroids. The album’s unofficial title, Hate You is a misanthropist’s dream come true, Chris screaming from the heart of a sonic maelstrom, although the blackened Cerbere edges it in terms of unutterable intensity. The album’s finale, the provocatively named Jesus manages to be the album’s longest track at just under three minutes, and the band make use of the expanded run time, delivering a full-blown crust assault that makes everything that came before seem like a warm up for the grand finale. A sweat-soaked blow out that leaves the listener (and presumably the band) shattered and drained, it brings the record to a tumultuous close.
Although nominally grind, Project For Bastards draw liberally from across the extreme spectrum to deliver an album that, without ever letting up, has enough tonal shifts to remain utterly absorbing throughout. Clearly, music as brutal is this is not for everyone, but as an example of extreme metal at its finest, Project For Bastards may well prove hard to beat. 9
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