In addition to many of his other incarnations, Déhà‘s 2018 has also been full of releases for the new project that simply bears his stage name, with two full lengths, a collection of unreleased tracks and this single, Blackness in May, preparatory to the release of the new long-distance work that will be titled Cruel Words. Talking about this release is however dutiful, because as always the Belgian musician of Italian origin does not spare his admirers important minutes of great music: in fact, Blackness in May contains, in addition to the song of the same name, the acoustic version of a track that will also be part of the new album (I Am Mine to Break), a cover of Saturnine by The Gathering and an unreleased track that should make its appearance only at this juncture (Confort Me II), for a turnover of almost half an hour of great music. The song Blackness in May is an admirable example of post-metal in the interpretation of this magnificent artist who surpasses left and right the best-known performers of these sounds, lending the whole an emotional tension and melodic afflatus almost unattainable for most of them. In I Am Mine to Break, ours offers yet another proof of his multidimensionality, showing what his progress as a singer has been and revealing, for those who had not yet understood, how much his interpretive range is not limited only to the growl used with Slow or the scream that makes Imber Luminis even more dramatic, but also includes a clean voice of equal evocativeness and above all appropriate and in tune. Trying one’s hand at a song sung in its original version by such an iconic female voice as that of Anneke van Giersbergen is never easy, but Saturnine, in the version offered by Déhà, becomes a necessarily different song but even more spasmodic in intensity and with the final pathos, already remarkable in the version that The Gathering presented on the album If_then_else, being increased to the nth degree. For the intimate Comfort Me II the same applies as for I Am Mine to Break, with the difference that screaming is used here but only as a counterpoint, reinforcing the more intense phases of the song that best closes a release that largely possesses a life of its own, despite its stated promotional guise. All the more reason, then, to make this work one’s own as well, in anticipation of a new full length that, given the premises, makes us easy prophets in predicting it as yet another musical jewel birthed by Déhà‘s fervid and brilliant mind.

2019 – Musical Excrements