Day: May 26, 2014

There are people in the world who are particularly smart, able to maximize their time to devote to multiple activities, and the fact that they succeed with good results creates a sense of mild frustration to those who struggle to organize a normal existence in a decent way. The case in question is that of the Belgian musician Déhà, that the readers with better memory will remember to have found also in the reviews of Deos, Slow and C.O.A.G. The surprising fact is not only that all these works were united by an uncommon quality, but lies mainly in the variety of genres treated, an aspect that favors the compositional versatility of Déhà: in fact, if in Deos, in the company of Daniel Neagoe, the chosen genre was a death doom of excellent workmanship, with the moniker Slow moved the coordinates towards a funeral sound equally convincing while as C.O.A.G., in a truly surprising way, he ventured with the exasperated speed of grindcore. Imber Luminis shows us another face of the musician from Mons and, even if doom is always the starting point, in fact this is, among all the works mentioned, the one that shows the most stylistic facets. Two very long tracks, each well over twenty-five minutes, lead the listener in a journey that starts with the notes from the almost dreamy tone, on the edge of shoegaze, Imber, and then move gradually, both during the same song and in particular with the next track Aeternus, towards a suffering without filters, screamed in the true sense of the term, making pale in this sense even the most extreme exponents of depressive. A heartfelt vocal interpretation, deliberately excessive up to touch the borders of kitsch, brings the album to levels of despair almost paroxysmal, all supported by a sound system that constantly puts in the foreground the emotional impact, for a final result frankly amazing. A record that should be listened to with the right predisposition of mind, under penalty of the risk of rejecting it as soon as the sounds darken and the voice of Déhà expresses without any mediation the feelings of a spirit torn by a pain that can not be in any way soothed or endured. Another splendid work for the busy Belgian musician and, moreover, this one by Imber Luminis is not necessarily the last of his multiple incarnations; quantity and quality, indeed, not many are able to combine them with such ease in the artistic field.

2014 – Self Mutilation Records