As some of you may already know, I often listen to an album while doing some chores in the house. To be able to do that, I installed some speakers in the kitchen. It looks like crap with all the wiring but it sounds awesome. So today I received this new Deuil album, which is actually released today, and loaded it into my media player. Mere seconds after I pressed 'play', one of the kitchen speakers started cracking and eventually it died. Now, I do like Consouling Sounds but albums like this should come with a warning "can seriously damage your equipment"...
Anyway, enough fooling around. We're here to review the second album by Belgian blackened doom quartet Deuil. Ever since their previous album, Deuil has become one of the major players in the new Belgian wave of extreme music. They're in good company too, belonging to a 'stable' where AmenRa, Wiegedood and Sardonis define the new extreme. This is definitely where Deuil belongs, combining sludge, doom and black metal into two devastating songs.
What Deuil does is very intense and clearly not for the faint-hearted. Crushing riffs are being alternated with ferocious blastbeats and intense screams, far beyond what most bands do. This is not a band to start listening to when you 'want something else'. If you're into sludge or black metal and quite used to the genre, you might want to give it a shot. Let's just say you have to be initiated in these genres before your heart and mind can cope with the sheer nihilism, brutality and misery this quartet spawns. This music hurts, and it should. People should experience some sonic insanity once in a while.
Shock/Deny, and especially the second track, is one of the bleakest pieces of music I've ever heard. This music is capable of crushing every last bit of joy out of a person and devour all hope. The sludge passages makes most bands in that genre sound like poprock bands. The black metal passages send Immortal, Darkthrone and Behemoth back to the kindergarten. Just like our species is now named Homo Sapiens Sapiens, this genre should be called Extreme Extreme Metal.
So, to conclude, Deuil has delivered a scathing album which can blast them right into the top of present-day extreme metal scene. I can only hope the audiences are ready for this because when this bulldozer comes at you in full force, nothing will remain standing. Damn, this is intense...
Serge