Artist: Déhà
Title: Ashes As Rain II
Type: Album
Label: Digital
Now before this I was sadly only vaguely aware of Déhà and thtwoeir incredibly prolific and varied output. So why did this make me peek at it? Well I kinda liked the cover, and the idea of dropping an album on New Years Eve just to fuck with people’s end of year lists really amused me. Especially as for the first time in fifteen odd years I didn’t have to do one. So for the sheer chutzpah, and the rather cool cover it was ‘give it a go time’…
Forty minutes later I was messaging friends just to do that; fuck up their end of year lists because you really, really don’t want to sleep on this one.
Apparently (because I haven’t had the time to check it out yet) this is part two of a… well, style Déhà is following and that style is, well, atmospheric black metal with a medieval filter.
‘Amidst The Sombre Castle’ begins with some beautifully played and recorded acoustic guitar that shatters into black metal and yet somehow the melody is still there, hiding almost. It brings an immediate epic quality to the music, the riffing throwing shadows up against the wall and then a tune that makes your hairs stand on end. Epic, yes, and that feel of folk music but more muscular in tone. If it was a dungeon synth tune it would be Atlantean Sword. It just seeps into your blood and lets loose the same kind of hero that Moonlight Sorcery craft.
Oh, thinks I, this might be a bit good….
‘The Sin Eater’ (fantastic Heath Ledger film by the way) is more cold and direct black metal but no less brimful of a deep emotional flow to the tune. It has that feel I think of as Finnish in style, the perfect mix of soul gripping melody with the harsh riffing. Two songs in and I already know that this Belgian, Déhà, is a master of wielding melody with a grim aesthetic and yet somehow bringing the epic, medieval feel to a bitter world. If Saor rang to the sounds of knights in armour in a freezing Northern landscape you might be close. It is just… just beautiful.
‘Let The Gardens Be Burnt’ slices deep straight away. The vocals are so damned icy, a bitter ghostly howl. The melodic river running through is wide and deep and drags you under into a world of blazing destruction. The clean vocals that are just the buring embers at its heart and the full on heavy metal riff is an utter call to war. I honestly failed to breath as this section just created images of fire and warriors in my mind and something like a strange, swell of pride. It felt like I was there with them…somehow. Dark and so very, very beautiful.
‘Mesmerised By Death’ has another acoustic intro, one full of dance and celebration which even as the harsh vocals and the distortion riddled riff comes in retains a sway and a dangerous smile. I am unsure why, I have no lyrics, but something about this atmosphere brings the sly smile of the sardonic villain to mind; a charismatic energy, a leader and a warrior. The tune has such a folk feel to it without remotely approaching some silly jig. This is the folklore of a clan’s pride, of their history and the darkness they have danced with. It brings a strange lump to my throat…
‘To The Trees I Shall Return’ leads us on, somehow less harsh but no less compelling and impossible to refuse. It is another glorious, mesmerising melody laden song that still has the harsh edges of someone not looking away from the reality of their life. Who knows what the trees hold but it feels that there is a such a pull that no one can resist the ancient tug on their souls. It again is still black metal but it is of a time and of a place where swords still lived in hands and the world was turmoil.
‘King Of Thorns’ has a melancholy to it in the melody, one that guides the song along the borderlands of epic metal and yet is always bulled back into the dense, sharp hooks of black metal.
‘To The Mountain Passes’ has a truly weird opening; unsettling and discordant, distorted voice…I’m not sure I want to travel these passes. This is a track of blizzard beasts; swirling storms conjured by the riff and echoing vocals threatening to bury you in the frozen land. Something is out there as we struggle on, the trudge of our steps in the determined pace of the drums as the riff buzzes like icy wind. The vocals shouting above the blizzard, the melody rousing the blood too not give in, not to falter is absolutely gorgeous. Such a fantastic summoning of the journey.
And we close on ‘And He Walks…’ A title I found ominous, an intro that does little to dispel the foreboding. The riff has a steady step, one of purpose and inevitability and then, once more Déhà find one of his glorious refrains and although the fear reamins there is something of majesty in this moment too. He walks, and the sight is both terrifying and glorious. The lead break is just beautiful, the feeling is one of some strange yearning. Something not yet done. Something which drives him on. For some reason an image of a figure like David Gemmel’s Druss rises and then fades into something else, something Déhà’s own. The instrumental section is the pinnacle; Fellwarden and Moonlight Sorcery and just touches of that Caledonian sound of Saor and the epic landscapes of Winterfylleth.
I didn’t want this to end.
Honestly, scrap your end of year lists as if you’re a fan of epic black metal, of any of the bands I mentioned and you haven’t heard this your list is perhaps incomplete.
I am staggered and stunned. This is black metal of epic worlds and of legends. The musicality, the songwriting, the weaving of melody and buzzsaw, of howls and clear singing is majestic.
Damn, wish I could hear this live too.
Buy the hell out of it.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 