Le Grand Guignol - The Great Maddening (2007)

Ever wash down a few LSD tabs with a couple pints of raw ether and then saunter over to the town carnival like the town drunk? Nah, me either, but I would like to think it's something Hunter S. Thompson would have done. After all, the man was once quoted saying "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

The going sure gets weird on "The Great Maddening", more accurately, hysterically demented and soaking in a vat of mescaline, marinating the mania all the more. It's difficult to describe this album without using as much hyperbole as a tween would use when describing his first hand-job to an assemblage of prepubescent seventh-graders keen on hearing the exact recount of the sexual tale, all the while trying to realistically wade through all the bullshit… In all likelihood, the hand-job took place behind a shed, and it lasted a total of 13 seconds while some unfortunate female was fumbling around his Affliction boxers trying to locate his "enormous" erection, which had already been pulsating from seamen-free ejaculation. You see, sometimes you need hyperbole otherwise the true story straddles the line of cringe-worthy like a cowgirl with Cerebral Palsy.

Moving on. Le Grand Guignol were once known by the name of Vindsval back when the band members lived in Luxembourg, playing the same type of absinthe binged avant-garde metal with their heels firmly planted in the grounds of demented and horrific sounding, albeit with a sound less meticulous and well crafted as they were on "The Great Maddening".

I rarely post anything of this ilk on SHOM these days, let alone purposefully listen to it (probably because of all the low grade garage punk I've been stuffing in my ears), but when a song from this album came on while briefly playing my music library on shuffle I was taken to it, it floated my proverbial boat, and I remembered that it's okay if metal isn't always deadpan with frostbitten grimness… Look at early black metal and black metal purists of today's day and age, talk about cringe-worthy.

This album warrants some praise for its well articulated use of eclectic instruments like the xylophone, cello, violin, flutes, harpischords and various other keys, which fully attribute to the obscure atmosphere. 

 
Le Grand Guignol (bandcamp)

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