Labels: Apocaplexy – Throatruiner
Review by: Alex Deller
The second full-length from these French noiseniks sees them straying even further from their tangled metallic roots, and the results are pretty glorious. ‘Place Noir’ pounds and surges in a manner that’s weary and browbeaten but still utterly determined, the mid-paced churn like an incremental belly-crawl across acres of jagged metal and broken glass in the name of love or, more likely, revenge. Vocals howl and groan while feedback wheedles unkindly away, and the results carry a sense of burden that recalls Unsane at their most puffed out and the sheer ungodly toil of that last Kowloon Walled City record. While difficult and abrasive it’s the relentless grinding away at your spirit that makes the greatest overall impact: a slow, water-over-stone erosion that brings with it a deep, all-encompassing sense of sorrow that’s all the more potent because you can’t quite identify its source.