Plebeian Grandstand – Rien ne Suffit (Review)

This is the fourth album from Plebeian Grandstand, a French black metal/hardcore/experimental band.

It’s been a while since the vicious malignant dissonance of 2016’s False Highs, True Lows, so how have Plebeian Grandstand spent the time? Mutating and growing, it seems.

With a duration of 51 minutes Rien ne Suffit is Plebeian Grandstand’s longest album by far, and with this increased length comes the reinvigorated sound of a band pushing themselves further than previously. Building noise, jazz, electronica, and industrial on top of a warped blackened base, this album is not for the weak of constitution.

Plebeian Grandstand never had the most friendly or accessible sound at the best of times, but this is something else. The experimental aspects are punctuated by the band’s more ‘traditional’ (for them) dissonant blackened aggression, but even these latter aspects have not made it through the band’s transformation unscathed.

This is Plebeian Grandstand at their most twisted and nightmarish. The sounds you’ll find on Rien ne Suffit congeal around a dark, hallucinogenic journey into avant-garde chaos and noise-wracked Hellscapes. These songs form a sort of underground cinematic experience that’s grim and harsh in new and horrifying ways, and it makes for a wonderfully disorienting and malignant encounter. Plebeian Grandstand are not playing it safe here. Instead, they’re having sadistic fun by spiking their hostile black metal and chaotic hardcore with the sort of ugly non-standard malevolence that you’d more readily associate with a band like Imperial Triumphant.

Plebeian Grandstand have morphed into a sort of terrifying extreme post-metal act of sorts. This new direction suits them down to the ground, and Rien ne Suffit is an accomplished slice of avant-garde blackened art.