Review by Sonny for Peste Noire - La sanie des siècles : Panégyrique de la dégénérescence (2006)

Another band with which I have been unacquainted until now and yet another decent French black metal outfit. Our gallic cousins really do produce a lot of the better and more interesting modern black metal bands, I have to admit. Peste Noire, certainly on the evidence of this release, favour the lo-fi approach, albeit not as lo-fi as the commentary around this album would have you believe - the album does have some production values and I've certainly heard worse (or is that better?). The vocals are of the desperately shrieking type, reminiscent of those employed by some of the more demented depressive black metal outfits, that tap into something primal and horrifying in the human psyche, although this certainly is no DSBM album. Bizarrely and somewhat atypically for most black metal, there are a significant number of guitar solos on the album that may have come straight from the Gary Moore songbook which, in addition to the deranged vocals, contribute to the strangeness of the record and the sensation that things are not really what they are expected to be.
From all that I've read about the band there are members who seem to have some quite reprehensible views, a common pitfall for followers of black metal unfortunately and I guess that may colour how some people may receive the music. Putting all that aside, this is certainly a bit of a curveball as far as orthodox black metal goes and, for me personally, not a completely successful one - those solos for example just stick out like a sore thumb. Decent but no classic and I'm not sure if I would return to it that often, although the odd track like Spleen holds a lot of appeal for me.