I bet, if you were a Barcelona fan, when Leo Messi scores less than two goals in a game or, at least, doesn’t perform one of those actions in which he dribbles all the opponents (and while he’s at it, some soda man), you would leave the stadium veiledly disappointed. When I find myself dealing with Déhà and Daniel Neagoe I feel more or less like the blaugrana supporters towards the Argentinian Pulga, and so the publication of a new album that sees them both protagonists risks to displease me relatively even if it results winning. The second album under the name of Deos, the funeral project that sees the two co-responsible for 50% of the compositional effort, is in fact an impeccable demonstration of how to interpret the genre, but it is not the masterpiece I would have expected. This is because, of the four tracks that form the tracklist of …To Depart, only two are the pearls that can spring from a few other minds besides those of the brilliant duo, while both the opening track (The Vigil) and the closing one (The Emptiness) do not prove to be up to such splendor. Obviously these two tracks would make the fortune of many bands, which would use them to build around an entire album, but compared to the previous album is the much more frequent use of clean vocals, and a rarefaction that makes the sound more interlocutory, partially weaken the emotional impact of the work. After all, the mentioned characteristics are also present in The Last Journey and The Silence, but this happens in a more organic way in alternation to the moments rich in pathos caused by the hardening of the sound, associated to the deadly growl of Daniel: the title of the first of the two tracks really fits a trend capable of evoking painful feelings difficult to describe in words (to help you try to think of the best Ea, but much better technically and further slowed down), while the second is, if possible, even more dramatic in its procession but is diluted by melodic openings with clean vocals that, here, are much more functional to the cause than at other junctures. If we want, we can find a certain parallelism between the couple Fortitude, Pain, Suffering – …To Depart and Gaïa – Mythologiae of Slow, solo project of Déhà, in the sense that in both cases the most recent album sees a partial attenuation of the roughness and a contextual increase of the ambient parts and of those sung with clean voice. In all this, then, inevitably and rightly end up to flow also the other musical experiences of the two, starting from Clouds, from which are drawn some piano passages of intimate style, which we also find in the same Eye Of Solitude. In good substance …To Depart is, as said in the introductory phase, a beautiful work, even if its predecessor had offered me even more painfully excruciating sensations; I cannot exclude a priori that behind all this there could be a sort of affective prejudice, since it was thanks to Fortitude, Pain, Suffering that I discovered the existence of Déhà and Daniel, two of the musicians that I esteem the most nowadays, and maybe being satisfied with an album like …To Depart is the best thing to do: don’t be surprised, therefore, a rather high vote, since it corresponds in toto to the objective value of what has been listened to. To be mentioned, finally, and not only for the sake of the record, the precious contribution to the final result of the album by Romanian guitarist Alex Cozaciuc of Descend Into Despair.
2015 – GS Productions
Mournful Sounds 
You must be logged in to post a comment.