Peste Noire - Band History

Band History

Peste Noire was created by La sale Famine de Valfunde (i.e. "The filthy Famine of Valfunde"), initially under the name Dor Daedeloth. As he wasn't able to play drums, Famine recruited Neige who agreed to be a drummer on Peste Noire's demos. Argoth, a session bass player, also helped up to the 2002 "Mémoire Païenne" demo. Famine (then known as Aegnor/Feu Cruel) would also be the lead guitarist on Neige's Alcest's first demo tape "Tristesse Hivernale" released on 2001 through Drakkar Productions in which Famine wrote the main riff of the song "La forêt de Cristal". Peste Noire released three demos (Aryan Supremacy (2001), Macabre transcendance... (2002) and Phalènes and Pestilence – Salvatrice averse (2003)), and one split demo tape with Sombre Chemin in their first four years of existence. All P.N. demos were recorded and engineered by Famine and then copied one by one on audio cassettes, the traditional media for demos in the black metal genre.

In 2006, Famine hired new members Winterhalter (drums) and Indria (bass) to play on Peste Noire's first studio album, and to expand Famine’s music. They completed what Famine began to call "Kommando Peste Noire". At the time, Famine had fired Neige from the band and P.N. was a three-piece (Famine, Winterhalter, Indria) when the debut album La Sanie des siècles - Panégyrique de la dégénérescence was recorded and produced in August 2006 by French label De profundis éditions. La Sanie des siècles (which roughly translates as "The sanies of the centuries – Ode to degeneration", "sanies" being "a thin greenish foul-smelling discharge from a wound, ulcer, etc., containing pus and blood" according to the Collins English Dictionary) is basically a compilation of the demo tracks previously written/recorded by Famine on his own equipment re-recorded in Rosenkrantz studio (Abigail, Celestia, Mortifera) with a full three-piece line-up (Neige contributed vocals on "Dueil Angoisseus" (studio version)). "Nous sommes fanés" (the introduction track) and "Des médecins malades et des saints séquestrés", the bonus track on the album, were old demo tracks and featured Famine (guitars, bass guitar, vocals) and Neige (session drums).

De profundis éditions produced Peste Noire's second album Folkfuck Folie, released in June 2007. Folkfuck Folie features studio versions of the four "rehearsal" tracks from the "Lorraine Rehearsal". This second album was once again written by Famine, and he has described it as "Folklore d’égout" ("Folklore from the sewers"). The album was recorded on a tape machine, in the same way punks produced their albums in the 80s, thereby showing the band's disregard for conventions. The lyrics sometimes seem on the verge of autobiography, and they mainly deal with apocalyptic themes, the final triumph of the body over the torments of the mind, primal barbarity, wartime poetry, the spreading of sexually transmitted diseases, and mental disorder, the latter of which is symbolized by the radio sample of the demented poet Antonin Artaud used as an introduction to the track "Folkfuck Folie". The songs are generally shorter than on their debut and the production has a much grittier quality. Famine ironically said that his goal was "to create the ugliest and most irritating sound possible, in order make the album unlistenable after having heard two songs", adding "You have to be mentally unstable to go through the entire album" . In his own words, Folkfuck Folie was an attempt to weed out the “trendies” in their audience, which put Peste Noire on the map as one of the most rebellious and unconventional act in the genre. Unsurprisingly, there appears to be a widespread popular stigma surrounding this particular release. While Neige’s input on La Sanie des siècles - Panégyrique de la dégénérescence was non-existent, on Folkfuck Folie he wrote and played second guitar on"La Césarienne", the lyrics of which are a poem written by Famine.

In March 2009, Peste Noire released their third album Ballade cuntre lo Anemi francor (i.e. "Ballad against the enemies of France") with a new line-up chosen by Famine, consisting of a new drummer A. (from Darvulia) and new bass player Ragondin replacing Neige, Winterhalter and Indria. This album, whose main theme is based on the nostalgia for medieval France manifested through traditional military songs or royal chants with warlike, nationalistic lyrics, is reminiscent in sound of the P.N. demos, but the style has evolved into a mix of black metal and progressive folk, with crust and hard rock rhythms. It also features piano / Hammond organ interludes played by Sainte Audrey-Yolande de la Molteverge, who is also responsible for the female vocals, notably on Peste Noire's interpretation of one of the Action Française's Monarchist anthems, "La France bouge". Unlike the previous two albums which had been recorded in the Rosenkrantz studios, Ballade was recorded with intentional simplicity and sloppiness by Famine on his own recording equipment, in order to fit with the general national romantic aesthetics and the production was kept lo-fi and raw. Famine, still living up to his controversial reputation, characterized this unique style as "Boyscout satanism" in a very typically French fashion. Following their tradition of using the works of medieval French authors and poets in their albums, P.N. also adapted the 14th century French poet, thief and vagabond François Villon's poem "Ballade contre les ennemis de la France" into a black metal version, entitled "Ballade cuntre les anemis de la France", as well as 19th century fin de siècle poet Paul Verlaine's piece "Soleils Couchants" - both these poets' roguish, low-life aesthetic being perfectly suited for Famine’s purposes.

Having relocated to Auvergne, Famine created his own label, La mesnie Herlequin, in May 2011 to release the band's fourth effort: the folkish and carnivalesque L'Ordure à l'état Pur (which translates roughly as "The pure essence of garbage"). The album's cover artwork displays a graffitied version of Eugene Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People where the allegorical figure of Liberty is parodied as a decaying, walking corpse and Gavroche pictured as a one-eyed pig, whilst another figure has a toilet seat for a head - all of which heralds a new French Revolution with different protagonists and ideals. Notre Dame de Paris is also replaced by the World Trade Center's smoking Twin Towers. The album, which benefits from a warm, crisp and painstaking production, was recorded and mixed between August 2010 and January 2011 at the Green Studio (Fr) by Engwar. It saw the return of bass guitarist Indria and the recruitment of a new drummer, Vicomte Chtedire de Kroumpadis, as well as the integration of real classical session musicians (a cellist, an accordionist and a trombonist) to enhance the various atmospheres or folkish aspects of some of the songs, such as the trombone-driven ska punk and accordion folk song intermezzi in "Casse, Pêches, Fractures et Traditions". The album is elaborate in its construction, complex, multi-layered and baroque because it tells a many-faceted story as it leads the listener on an adventurous journey. Indeed, none of the experimentation or hybrid eclecticism was done for the sake of experimenting or for being eclectic. A large amount of stylistic influences and constant progression pervade the five songs, from the industrial black metal-orientated "Cochon Carotte et les soeurs Crotte" with its zouk intermezzo highlighted by Indria's fretless bass solo, or the rockish dirge "La Condi Hu" underpinned by haunting cellos and introduced by brooding monk-like chants, to the rich, medieval and emotional épinette des Vosges melodies on "J'avais rêvé du Nord" ("I had dreamt of the North"). The traditional/folkish and acoustic elements, including Sainte Audrey's fragile vocals, are pitted against the more modern aspects of L'Ordure à l'état Pur, an album packed with samples of modern urban violence culled from French TV news reports, ambulance sirens, riots, guns being cocked and shots being fired, and BDSM performed over Eurodance beats, all of which together paint a giant fresco of hopelessness, a brutal documentary of collective decomposition displayed on long, drawn out cinematic songs.L'Ordure à l'état Pur is an album of contrasts with an intricate synchrony between lyrics and music, both expressing a disgust towards the modern age.