Fange - Purulences

Released by: Throatruiner Records

Release Date: 14.03.25

Running Time: 32:11

Review by Dark Juan

Score: Infinity/10

Bonjour, mes amis! C’est moi, Dark Juan. Bienvenue dans un autre voyage à travers les portails déchirants de ce qui passe pour mon imagination.

A moment of seriousness, if you will. With the current deplorable state of world politics and being a very political person with very definite views, I have taken the decision to make no mention of what is happening currently in my music reviews. This is for two reasons – one, very few of you are even bothered about what my thoughts are on it, and two, the level of misinformation and stupidity is beyond my comprehension, and I have no desire to involve myself with arguing with people. Dark Juan is about love.

This might change, but for now, this is my policy. This shit I write is meant to be fun for everyone. There’s precious little fun going on for anyone right now. Hence, my decision is also good from a mental health point of view. It is no secret that I have been prone to depression in the past and occasionally still, and frankly the shitshow going on out there is not good for what’s left of my mental equilibrium.

That being said, then, let me wax lyrical about my favourite ever Breton band, Fange. I have been a fan for quite some time now and their current album per year assault on my senses is the very greatest of Very Good Things. It is obvious that the Platter of Splatter ™ has been called into service with some alacrity when news of their newest album, “Purulences”, dropped into the Inbox of Horrendous Doom. I snatched that motherfucker up faster than a coke fiend ringing their dealer after a lottery win.

“Purulences” is a completely different animal than previous release “Perdition”, which I love with every fibre of my being, being as it is a much more guitar-driven record. Where “perdition” was cold and machinelike and simply a cold-blooded killer of an album, “Purulences” is warm and slimy, not against some close in wetwork, close enough to feel its breath upon your cheek as it drives the knife into your abdomen again and again and again, hands slippery with gore and a maniacal grin on its face as your collapse into a pool of claret, choking on what blood is left in your veins. It is a close-in, merciless killer of an album.

Opening track ‘Cavalier Seul’ dispenses with all pretence at subtlety, preferring instead to assault the senses with droning guitar work that gives way to an astonishing, all-consuming wall of sound of which the ultra-visceral vocals of Matthias Jungbluth are a mere component of the combined-arms war machine hitting you. Fange do not do gentle. They do sheer, unadulterated Industrial Sludge murder.

This time, Fange have toned down the electronics in favour of fucking monolithic, gigantic riffs with Death Metal leanings, and a venomous vocal approach, swaying from spoken-sung, declamatory verses to borderline anthemic shouted choruses, married to punishing, pistoning Industrial beats and a bass sound that must surely emanate from the bowels of Hell, such is the boneshaking, terrifying quality of it. The bass on this record is truly extraordinary. I have NEVER heard a more thunderous, ponderous, crushing bass sound.

Once again Fange have left me utterly speechless. You know how there are always a few bands that just speak to your soul? Fange are like that for me. They can do no wrong. Every record is unique, yet somehow quintessentially Fange at the same time. Every time I hear them, they fill me completely, and I am a mere empty vessel when they finish, wrung out and spent, cold and quivering on the floor, dehydrated and sweating, yet shaking with cold.

There are not many bands that can still do that to me. Fange do it EVERY time and that’s frankly fucking scary. They truly are the soundtrack to the horrors I carry around in my head. The soundtrack to the Industrial slaughter of endless lines of naked, filthy people and their screams of terror and sobbing with fear. They are the sound of meathooks and chains and jetwashes rinsing blood and bits of flesh into stained steel gutters, of clanking unstoppable machinery and the stench of ozone and shit and blood and viscera mingled together in a hellish smorgasbord of dank smells. They are the sound of the possible murderer who rides with Dark Juan no matter where he is or what he is doing. That black presence that is a mere millimetre from bursting through my thin veneer of civilisation, the one that wants to bury its teeth in the throats of others and tear through windpipes and feel its mouth filled with the claret, life-giving liquid of others and rend and tear and rip apart with bare hands, gobbets of flesh hanging from bared, blood-soaked teeth, a rictus grin of murder and hatred with arms and chest coated with the horror and wetness of the lifeblood of humans who are not like Dark Juan…

Yes, folks, its safe to say that Fange have fucking done it AGAIN. “Purulences” is another triumph that welds Industrial music to the mass destruction of Death Metal and Sludge and to be honest it kicks the fuck out of anyone else who attempts Industrial music. Fange are incomparable. Horrific, yes. Powerful? Undoubtedly. Scary as fuck? You betcha. Possessed of such rage that their music is so ridiculously powerful it would tear a main battle tank in half? Fuck yeah!

You need to hear this album. You NEED to love Fange. You need this level of shocking, uncompromising brutality in your life. You need sparking, damage electronics and overpowered guitars and sepulchral bass and the kind of spit-flecked roaring that only insane people do. You need the punishment of endless, Industrial rhythms. You NEED to. I cannot stress enough how much I love Fange’s music.

The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Le système breveté d'évaluation des éclaboussures de sang Dark Juan pour mes amis francophones du monde entier - S'adressant plus spécifiquement au contingent français, que s'est-il passé en France qui a donné naissance à Fange ? Je veux dire, au Royaume-Uni, nous avons d'énormes problèmes qui donnent naissance à la scène Metal ici, mais en France, je pensais que tu étais plus... raffiné. Non, ce n'est pas le bon mot. Plus sage, peut-être. Je ne sais pas. Je me remets beaucoup en question en ce moment avec les horreurs du monde en dehors de ma petite bulle. Mais que Fange règne longtemps. Putain de groupe genial!) awards Fange Infinity/10 for yet another perfect record. Merci, mes amis. Merci beaucoup pour votre musique. J’adore.

TRACKLISTING:

Cavalier Seul

Sans Conviction

Mortes Promesses

Grand Guignol

Juste Cruel

Langues Fourchues

Aux Abois

LINE-UP:

Antoine Perron – Bass, vocals

Benjamin Moreau – Guitars, vocals, machines

Matthias Jungbluth – Vocals, lyrics

Titouan le Gal – Guitars, additional vocals

---

For more, visit the following links: Instagram | Bandcamp | Facebook  | Spotify