Fingering blood and petrol-slicked barbed wire into satisfying loops while locked in a state of careful autopsy our surgically induced delirium today stems from a need to see the whole of the viscera, plucking through the machinery of a beast to better know its neuroses and motivations. Yet after eight full-length albums the viscous, slickened putridity of Rennes, France-based industrial sludge/death metal quartet FANGE‘s organ pile becomes difficult to contain, a writhing monument which overtakes our operating theatre with its volatile, sulfurous bombast. Inducing some deliberate contrast with the previous album ‘Purulences‘ speaks to yet another bold step taken beyond the momentum of fractured sub-genre combine, an ouevre long developed into fusion then splayed and snipped into gristle-studded grime. Promising a bigger return to guitar-driven spectacle than before yet leaving no brilliancy behind these folks have simply gone darker, hit harder while managing to insert their not-so jagged hooks in ear by way of enormous production values and corrosive, menacing movements.

Fange formed primarily from the mind of guitarist Benjamin Moreau (ex-Huata) circa 2013 creating what I’d consider their Mark I sound featuring HM-2 stoked guitar tones, a colder death metal inspired sludge metal creation which’d reach its peaking interest in noxious noise experimentation by 2017 or so after releasing two EPs and two full-length albums. The band’s first breakthrough take for my own taste was ‘Punir‘ (2019) and from that point I’ve reviewed most everything released by the band, noting a strong pivot in both their songcraft and expression from that launching point. While production values and sub-genre prompts make for somewhat interesting notes in the long run my interest in the band around this time stemmed from a sense of experimentation and personal mastery, each musician appeared to be putting serious energy into their own performances (which we can see live) but also adding up to a biomechanical constant, and they’ve obviously been brimming with ideas and serious chemistry year-over-year, having released six records in as many years.

For those prone to become overwhelmed by a prolific discography I’d suggest ‘Pudeur‘ (2020) was a claw wrapped firmly around death metal guitar ideas working in an industrial music context, and while the band had focused on death metal and noise as constants in previous work that was the album that’d found the right fit sonically within its production values as well as more focus on industrial metal with a harrowing sludge/post-metal boom to every hit. The somewhat underrated ‘Pantocrator‘ (2022) abandoned comfort for two extremes, an album that illustrates the darkest twin peaks of Fange‘s sound split side-to-side. The reason I bring these two albums up is to suggest the next three releases from the group, each of which now feature guitarist Titouan le Gal (Epectase), are both the fruits of earlier labors and a Mark III or third formation of the band which has thus far been incredibly locked into their vision; Between Godflesh/Jesu to The Body and even Valborg there are both multitudes and yet no sufficient comparison(s) to be made with the current phasal mastery of Fange and where they’ve gone with it starting with ‘Privation‘ (2023), an album I’d praised with uncertainty of what was to come at the time.

‘Purulences‘ is stated as a reaction to the industrial/post-metal extreme explored on ‘Perdition‘ (2024) where that prior record was no less heavy in most respects but sought to push further away from the guitar-driven constant of the band up ’til that point and instead compose without the riff as the starting point. This’d lead to even catchier, highly atmospheric pieces than they’d managed on ‘Privation‘. For my own taste a song like “Toute Honte Bue” was almost shockingly “alt-metal”, a shocking ear-grabber compared to what came before and to the point that it’d felt like the natural course would be to lean into a sound as intoxicatingly connective. It is a surprising choice today then that album number eight returns with the force of their guitars presented up front, louder than ever though without any pure death metal intent in mind. In place of the looser, fiery strokes of Fange‘s earliest LPs instead we find the gnarled and enormous guitar tones at the brunt of the mix and tearing fresh holes in their dimension via cold industrial death-deranged progressions. The explosion within the machine is immediate as “Cavalier Seul” brings more than thunder but almost nuclear burning strikes of guitar movements trading space with cold beats and syncopated basslines.

Solitude brings a revelation of impermanence before creating singularity, the truth of the self and/or cruelest honesty as the lyrics here from vocalist Matthias Jungbluth are not only unholiest intrusive thoughts but embodiment of terrifyingly venomous attitudes in their inward-directed bite. From my point of view there is almost always a schism represented in Fange‘s messaging, representing angst in the sense that they speak to frustration with personal nature and the unnatural machine, caught between various catch twenty-two scenario. This time a cold acceptance of the dark feels particularly damning but is also beautifully writ and can be appreciated even if auto-translated with some of their dual meanings slashed away. Side A offers the most striking examples of this authorship between “Sans Conviction” (which continues the fiery industrial metal of the opener) and especially the distraught sprawl of “Grand Guignol”.

Naturally the main event here is also a key single, “Mortes Promesses“, more surges of mile-high power chords and concatenated industrial grooves with some of the subtler layers of keys/synths found on the previous album simmering beneath the fracas otherwise. This is to me something much bigger than I’d ever envisioned industrial metal sounding be it 1992 or 2012 though the bones of the actual rhythms haven’t depended upon convolution to create their hook, an equal and opposing reaction which amounts to a simple-but-whole statement within the albums ongoing thread on Side A. In passage to the second half of ‘Purulences‘ the sparks are still flying off their action but we find something like industrial death metal being mused upon in the basal rhythms of “Juste Cruel” and parts of “Langues Fourchues”, this is a fine extension of the album’s greater thought without pushing too far beyond the ideas introduced on the first half; The full listen of this album has a lingering harshness to it, a directness which feeds itself down the beltway fast enough within fairly uniformly stated ~4-5 minute pieces and a total of just a couple minutes beyond the half hour mark. Any longer might’ve been overstated and even still closer “Aux Abois” is nearly too much as it collapses into a lower (but still heavy) mood.

Fange have thrived when tasking themselves with increasingly self-directed vision/craft and it seems the more they do themselves the more distinct and personal their work becomes. This is true both in terms of Moreau‘s distinct illustrations for I believe all of their covers beyond ‘Punir‘ as well as the choice to once again self-produce and engineer the recordings for this album just as they had to great results on ‘Perdition‘. That said the pairing of Cyrille Gachet mixing with mastering from Alan Douches (@ West West Side Music) has proven an ideal anchor point which grants consistent signature for the band’s work. This meant I’ve headed into each of their records beyond 2019 immediately recognizing their sound despite a bold stylistic evolution taking place beyond that point. While I’m not sure this polished, ultra-moderne heaviness will appeal to everyone and certainly not the traditional metal spheres in most cases there is something I’ve found infectious and ambitiously stated within each of the band’s records. They’re on a track which is their own and this point and the uglier, more confrontational they get the more I am drawn to their extreme brand of sludge and death-heavy industrial metal. A high recommendation.

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