BUÑUEL: Mansuetude

While it’s been a solid year for all things noise-rock, the fierce contrarian that is Eugene S. Robinson continues to smash any pre-existing boundaries and reconfigure the template.

Alongside his bandmates – the Italian trio of guitarist Xabier Iriondo, bassist Andrea Lombardini, and drummer Franz Valente – BUÑUEL’s latest train-wreck committed to tape, Mansuetude, moves beyond chaos of the trilogy, A Resting Place for Strangers, The Easy Way Out and Killers Like Us. Mansuetude is more instinctual. Something gloriously haphazard and untethered. It’s the loose cannon of a record that BUÑUEL have finally unleased.

Mansuetude couldn’t have come at a better time for Robinson. The recent halt of neo-rock legends, Oxbow, during their European tour with Mr. Bungle surprised many, and while the door isn’t completely shut for a return, immediate creative concerns are firmly elsewhere.

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All blood, bone and thousand-yard stare, Robinson continues to look forward. Far from the “handsomest man with a handsomest plan” (When God Used a Rope), Mansuetude feels more like the good man who turned bad on Killers Like Us’ closer, Even the Jungle. And it results in BUÑUEL at their most hazardous.

Starting with Who Missed Me. A calcified shell of bile, Robinson screeches and barks through an avalanche of Iriondo’s droning guitar and Valente’s double kick-drum. It’s speed-induced punk that suddenly gets pulled into a black acid fever dream one-minute and 50 seconds in. It’s these moments that showcase BUÑUEL’s new abstract ways, and it continues later during A Killing on the Beach with sonic dreamscapes juxtaposing the horror story Robinson unfurls.

Of course, the horror stories are on tap. It’s just what this band does, as Robinson frames sordid realities through the claustrophobic hellscape of Fixer (featuring Couch Slut’s Megan Osztrosits) and on penultimate track, Pimp, which is a searing mongrelisation of the blues.

Elsewhere, Drug Burn is unadulterated proto-rock for loud volumes and high speeds. It’s not the only time BUÑUEL revel in velocity, as Class, High. Speed Chase and American Steel (featuring The Jesus Lizard’s Duane Denison) are songs that will enhance the civic energy of a Hells Angels club house.

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Then there’s Movements No. 201 and Leather Bar (featuring cellist, Andrea Beninati). This is where BUÑUEL make their mark like never before, with blistering no-wave drone-rock that dangles from the knife’s edge. New ground is covered on Thrash, too, as David Binney’s skronking alto saxophone sees BUÑUEL exploring facets of thrashcore that no one else has.

The exploration ends with A Room in Berlin. A creeping lament that sounds like Robinson reciting lines from a jaundiced scrapbook in the corner of a hovel somewhere in bowels of Kreuzberg. You can smell the menace in the air, as Robinson delivers the song as if he’s trying to escape his own mind.

It’s indicative of Mansuetude. An album that sees BUÑUEL dismantling their sonic ideology for something disturbingly pure. The concoction of pace and vigour with Robinson’s hardened narratives, pulled from the most dangerous, grimiest corners this world has to offer. It’s a place that the vocalist has colonised over the years, but on Mansuetude he’s crafted a new trajectory. A new malice. A new chaos. It makes for something as raw and menacing as BUÑUEL has ever produced.

Mansuetude is out via Overdrive (UK/EU) and SKiN GRAFT (North America). Purchase from Bandcamp.