With a vast collection of full lengths, EP’s, splits and compilations, the grindcore band Fuck the Facts is certainly not a newcomer in the genre. Since 1999 they have released a new record almost every year and slowly but steadily their sound shifted from a weird and raw grindcore sound to a more nuanced, polished and mature one with a clear message for the listener.

‘Pleine Norceur‘ (meaning Total Darkness) is not a pure grindcore album, it’s so much more than that. This is the soundtrack to 2020, losing faith in humanity and in yourself. Dealing with themes like depression (‘Doubt’, ‘Fear’, ‘Neglect’), loss (‘Everything I love is Ending‘) and racism (‘_cide‘) this is an honest reflection on humanity’s worst aspects. It’s not just the lyrics that reflect on the emotions present here. While this record is grind at its core, we also find elements of melodic hardcore, death metal and mathcore all fused together in a natural blend that speeds up and slows down in such a natural way, you can’t help but be amazed at the songwriting and flow of the album.

Just listen to the single ‘Pleine Noirceur‘ with its melancholic melodies switching between raging grindcore, screeching feedback and beautiful melodic hardcore guitar lines. Or ‘Dropping Like Flies‘, with its main riff being pure death metal at heart. To call this grindcore without any further explanations would not describe most of the songs and this album at all. You can hardly compare this album directly to bands like Nasum and Napalm Death and I would rather compare them to Converge. There is still some pure grindcore or a mix with mathcore to be found here. ‘Ailleurs‘, ‘Sans Racines‘ and ‘L’abandon‘ are good examples of this, but the way the album is divided in longer, slower pieces and shorter blasting grindcore songs with moments to breathe in between keeps the listener engaged and it certainly plays with your expectations.

The production here is top notch, which gives even more credit to the guys and gal in the band, as they have recorded and produced everything at their Apartment 2 recording studio. Every instrument is audible and at perfect balance with each other without becoming a total mess. Whether it’s Mathieu “Vil” Vilandre’s pounding drums, Mel Mongeon’s screeching and desperate sounding vocals or Marc Bourgon’s bass. The harmony is nearing perfection and makes listening to this album all the more comfortable.

Grindcore can be a pretty straight forward genre and for me personally, very tiring too. When I come across an album expecting my eardrums to be pummeled and instead keep repeating it over and over again, it truly shows what the band is capable of. It took them 5 years to come up with a new full length and the long wait certainly pays off. It rarely happens that I have nothing negative to say about an album but this is definitely one of those moments. I can recommend this record to both fans and haters of the grindcore genre and to fans of heavy emotional music in general. Do give it a try.

Release date: November 20th, 2020
Label: Noise Salvation
Tracklist:

1. Doubt, Fear, Neglect
2. Ailleurs
3. Pleine Noirceur
4. Aube
5. Sans Lumière
6. Sans Racines
7. Everything I Love Is Ending
8. A Dying Light
9. Dropping Like Flies
10. L’abandon
11. An Ending
12. _cide