ten56. - iO

Dark Juan
Sep 14
5 min read

Released by: Out of Line

Release Date: 05.09.25

Running Time: 32:00

Score: 9/10

Good evening, you very naughty people! Dark Juan here, I’d like to say fresh from wrangling adults, but I feel like a bag of hammered shit, yet still I come to deliver some jollity, some talking about music and probably some twisted metaphors to do with warfare or slaughterhouses. I should tell you that I am surrounded by Smellhounds emitting smells that are surely banned under the Geneva Convention, Mrs Dark Juan is unwell and is draped decorously across a chaise-longue like a consumptive girl in a French painting (she isn’t, she’s huddled under a duvet in her onesie and looking very sorry for herself) and I am clad in a t-shirt from a very local band called Six Feet Below whose entire schtick is being from Yorkshire, wanting Sean “Bastard” Bean to be king and Yorkshire Tea. Now, everyone knows that Yorkshire Tea is the finest tea in the world, and that it comes from the extensive tea mines of Otley, providing employment for the good people of Keighley, because otherwise it would become a den of iniquity and vice, and that’s what Sunbridge Road in Bradford is for. In other news, Mrs Dark Juan has managed to tick off South America as another continent to which she has sent her very uncanny art, as one of her pieces will be winging its way to Chile quite soon.

In other news, and brace yourselves because this WILL be a shock, I don’t even feel like drinking tonight. I went out for a splendid lunch, you see, at a restaurant that Robert De fucking Niro has frequented in Halifax (this surprisingly is the truth. I know you can’t really be sure with me, but this is gospel) and it has laid rather heavy on me, and I have spent quite a lot of the afternoon being sated and not feeling like doing anything because of the rigours of digestion. But, considering my review queue is fucking massive, I have decided to do some work. Let us unleash the magnificent Platter of Splatter ™!

The offering we have placed upon the Platter of Splatter ™ is an interesting one – an Anglo-French band called ten56. That full stop is important and will be playing merry hell with my grammar Nazism throughout the review as it is part of the name of the band. Anyway, judging by what I have heard, ten56.’s Entente is anything but fucking Cordiale, being as the band sound like they are playing music made flesh that is being put through a meat grinder. Immediate reaction upon listening to opening cut ‘Doormat’ is that ten56. Are most assuredly ploughing their own unique furrow that takes in the angrier side of Nu-Metal a la Korn and American Head Charge – there’s that curious mix of vulnerability and sheer untrammelled rage that the erstwhile ungrateful colonials (THIS IS A JOKE) did so well. This is amalgamated with some of the most demented and discordant Industrial Metal I have ever heard, King Satan style warped samples and jabbing, sparking keyboards and metallic grinding underpin riffs that owe as much to early Pitch Shifter as they do to KMFDM and My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult, but even fucking HEAVIER. There is the influence of Hip-Hop in there as well, but this is absolutely not a Rap Metal album. Beneath the bludgeoning, there’s melody, and some, dare I say it, delicacy and vulnerability. The predominant emotion though, is RAGE. Red, bloody, all-encompassing rage. I’ve not heard a record that sounds this furious in a long time. The production is totally uncompromising – it is a wall of compressed sound that turns flesh to jelly and makes North Koreans worry about what capitalism actually looks like if this is what it sounds like. General Noriega would have surrendered within five seconds if the US army had played ten56. at him and not Guns n’ Roses.

There’s an amusing little vignette four tracks in called ‘LIFEISACHORE.MOV’ which took Dark Juan somewhat by surprise as it sounded just like one of those fucking bullshit adverts that ruin your groove when you’re watching YouTube music videos or are too cheap (like Dark Juan – but I am tighter than a gnat’s chuff after all, I’m from Yorkshire, and getting us to part with brass is like peeling skin) to pay for Spotify (Disclaimer – I only use Spotify when I am cooking and it is impractical to lug hundreds of CDs into the kitchen) and this amused me when I had realised what was going on.

So, yeah, I like ten56. very much so far. Riffs are delivered with blood-splattered savagery, the drumming sounds like the drummer has a) more arms than he was initially issued with, and b) an incredibly dangerous anger management problem, such is the venom with which he clatters his kit, the bass being that downtuned and low that it destabilises tectonic plates and the vocals – nothing is safe from the vocals. Encompassing everything from Trap, Drill, Rap, Metal and Industrial, Aaron Matts has a very versatile throat which can go from quiet and introspective to spittle-splattering fury in mere seconds as well as being able to smooth flow with the best of them. I think this is what Seething Akira could sound like if they really let themselves go and embraced their backbone of steel. ten56. are an onslaught quite unlike any other and Dark Juan is beguiled by their curious melding of very disparate styles and their absolute uncompromising fury.

The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Le système breveté de notation des éclaboussures de sang de Dark Juan, pour mes amis français. J'adore la scène musicale extrême française. Fange est l'un de mes groupes préférés, et maintenant avec ten56. vous continuez tous à prouver votre talent) awards ten56. 9/10 for a virtually perfect album that is a masterclass in aural violence and an absolute proof that both Britain and France are stronger when we work together, When we do that we can destroy the world. ten56. have just proved that.

Good evening.

TRACKLISTING:

1. Doormat

2. Pig

3. Snapped Neck

4. LIFEISACHORE.MOV

5. I Know Where You Sleep

6. Good Morning

7. Earwig

8. ICU

9. PTY FCK

10. Friends