Band:	Fuck The Facts
Album:	Pleine Noirceur
Style:	Noise, Grindcore
Release date:	November 2020

01. Doubt, Fear Neglect
02. Ailleurs
03. Pleine Noirceur
04. Aube
05. Sans Lumiere
06. Sans Racines
07. Everything I Love Is Ending
08. A Dying Light
09. Dropping Like Flies
10. L'abandon
11. An Ending
12. _cide

I can't say that grindcore was really a "new" thing in 2000, when Fuck The Facts burst into the scene, but in 2020 Pleine Noirceur shows that neither the band nor the genre stagnated in those two decades.

It's a bit mind boggling that Fuck The Facts are this old, especially for me, who only got into them through 2015's Desire Will Rot, and for the longest time I wasn't aware of how far back they actually go, until I gave Pleine Noirceur a go. And it was pretty much a "holy shit" moment, because it definitely sounds like what a grindcore album would sound from a band that never lost touch with the times, so thinking of them as a recent band was a bit of a justified assumption, because just how many other bands stay this vital after two decades? How many other grind bands could fool you that they're young and hip instead of old and legendary. Giving Pleine Noirceur more listens, Fuck The Facts feel like both of those.

It feels weird calling Fuck The Facts grindcore, as much as there are speed limit breaking riffs, visceral screams and all the right boxes are ticked, Pleine Noirceur gives us a band that doesn't fit neatly in that box. For every neck breaking moment, there's some many more dynamic and ever-changing moments that are either more atmospheric, more lush in sound, or just incredibly melodic. And, as anticipated, a lot of this stems from the grind sound being often closer to post-hardcore, or screamo, or post-rock, or powerviolence, or mathcore, maybe even post-punk and gothic rock; than simply being grindcore. Other than Mel Mongeon's instantly recognizable screamed voice, which constantly stays in its own emotional hardcore lane, the rest of the music does leave the grindcore territories for more melodic fields more often than not.

Again, none of the things that Fuck The Facts pull from on this record are anything new, and blends between them have been going on in the early to mid 2000s, when the band was in its infancy. But somehow Pleine Noirceur feels a bit left field in how it manages to pull from these sounds in a way that both keeps the sound consistent instead of disjointed while also feeling very varied instead of uniform. It feels like they've always been swimming in waters like these, judging from how well everything works together, and how well they shift the mood from despair to angst to hope. Throughout the album's 40-minute runtime, the band could've fool a lot of people that they're different bands if it wasn't for the vocals. It seems like a lot more barriers were broken in those five years since Desire Will Rot.

I should probably dive deeper into Fuck The Facts's discography, but Pleine Noirceur kinda makes me anxious that I won't be able to feel the same catharsis that I feel here. It's going to be hard to see them as a "grindcore" band from now on.