I had to look up what "gourmandise" meant. It would appear it refers to the joy of eating, and so the title, A Matter of Excessive Gourmandise (or rather its Gradual Validation) now makes perfect sense to me, both on its own and in the context of the album itself.
It opens with Nuclear Fire, a fast paced indie rock song, one where I think you'd be forgiven for not paying attention to the lyrics. They're pretty hard to make out and the song is so upbeat and fun that the initial inclination is to bop along. They're worth noting though, as they touch upon a general anxiety that I and I think a lot of people have likely felt over the last decade or so. This sense that bad things are happening, "the Swiss are raising despots" and "so is New York too", and the people who are able to stop it are either complicit or too apathetic to do so.
If you didn't get that sense in the first song, you probably will when listening to Proles MkIV. It's immediately more provocative, with this aggressively loud bass riff and droning guitars. There's one band in particular that immediately came to mind, and that's the incredible post-hardcore band from Wales, Future of the Left. I'm not sure what the first three versions of proles were, but either way the song acts as an attack of an underfunded education system and the increasing importance of nepotism as a means of success.
(Mud Caked Soldier Crying In The Rain Is The New) Old Man Shouting At The Clouds is similar in tone, although less scary and more upbeat, it also sounds a lot like Future of the Left. The riff on this one is sick, with its woofing bass synth and discordant guitar stabs. Lyrically it balances social commentary with absurdism and the end result makes for such an enjoyable listen - if you asked me to pick one song from this album to recommend, I'd recommend this one.
The fourth and final track, On Being a Faction of Idleness, changes the tone entirely. It's slow and nostalgic sounding, with spoken verses that on the surface detail a post- or pre-gig scene. They stop just shy of being explicit in what they allude to, but there's a sense of responsibility, or perhaps denying responsibility, embracing the now, mentoring, socialising, and maybe yearning for the past. It's one of those tracks where it's hard to separate the emotions brought on by the music and the meaning behind the words, and that's something that can make music so magical isn't it? It's a really great closer, to what's a really great EP. I liked it a lot.