Ελληνικά
Genre: Sludge Black Metal
Country: Belgium
Year: 2015
Label: Self-released
The first thing to notice is the awesome cover. It reflects the sadness and despair that accompany Deuil’s music. It doesn’t come as a surprise that the word “Deuil” means “mourning” in French. If one combines this with the name of their first Ep (Acceptance/Rebuilt) and with “Shock/Deny” then it’s not difficult to find the common ground. The band approaches within every release the steps of the so called “Stages Of Grief” model. To be exact, for reasons unknown, the first Ep referred to the last stage, while the new one goes back to the first.
In “Acceptance/Rebuilt”, however, there was no coherence among the optimism of the title and the feelings that the music provoked. Slow, excruciating sludge/black, which reached the boarders of drone at times, only to be disrupted by some blast beat outbreaks. In the new Ep, the mix leaves a prominently more clear sound and the vocals, which stayed at the background in the debut, now are emphasized, while at the same time the drone/doom parts make room for the black/sludge ones. Sadly this “upgrade” did not have the results we expected…For one, the unique characteristics the band displayed on the debut have now vanished. The band makes no effort to harness its influences (Deafheaven, Wolves In The Throne Room). Besides that, the vocals are a truly disappointing aspect of the recording. Monotonous, repetitious, weak. Even the pure old school black metal bands have quitted using such squeaky vocals nowadays! Well, when one finds the vocals disturbing, then the whole listen of the record gets achy. Damn that, as the band’s music is not bad at all. Though in several parts it ends up sounding kind of monotonous (no, not all sludge/black bands are monotonous as some may say :p), still, it has some high speed moments full of energy as well as nice doom cuts. As a die-hard fan of atmosphere in such releases, I’d say that Deuil’s performance in this section is mediocre.
To sum up, the project and the band’s decision to release 30 minute Ep’s quite frequently is interesting, though the results are unbalanced for the time being. In theory, the bands improvement will be imprinted regularly on these future releases and at the end of this journey the band will have settled on the features that fits it the best… We will continue monitoring them…
3.5/6
