As widely anticipated when talking about the single Blackness In May a few months ago, there was really no doubt that Déhà‘s new solo album (the second of the project that simply bears his name) would be yet another work of above-average level. Cruel Words repeats what we already heard in 4 5 6 and in the mentioned single, amplifying the duration and therefore the pleasure of listening to a work that makes the most impactful, from an emotional point of view, a genre that sometimes tends to spin on itself as the post metal, in all its variants. Déhà confirms that he has developed vocal skills that allow him to use an impeccable clean timbre, which is however alternated with the desperate intonation mostly used in his more extreme projects, such as Imber Luminis. And it is precisely there that, if you wish, you can find the key to the poetics present in much of the Belgian musician’s production, since at the heart of it lies an attitude of rejection towards existential conventions and what changes, depending on the moniker used, is the musical vehicle chosen to bring it all to the ears of the listeners. In this sense, with the releases under the name Déhà take shape the softer pulsions and, only apparently, less abrasive but not for this less involving and touching in their progression: exemplifying the most in this regard is Dead Butterflies, a track of rare beauty that, as often happens in the production of this tireless artist, develops as a long and unstoppable crescendo that leads to a final of paroxysmal emotionality. Apart from the splendid Blackness In May and I Am Mine To Break (the latter, however, in an even more involving version) already heard in the single that anticipated the album, we find a more raw Pain Is A Wasteland, a track in which the pain is expressed without any mediation, unlike Butterflies, where every feeling is more repressed and caged in a painful melodic envelope. This umpteenth gem created by Déhà closes the title track, another song dripping with pain and anguish that exceeds ten minutes, a sort of quintessence of what devastating emotional impact can produce the meeting between the depressive and the post black, when it is composed by what I do not hesitate to define one of the greatest contemporary creators of musical art in its most painful aspects: those who by now know his production by heart in all its various guises continue to be amazed by the consistent quality of each release, while those who have not yet come across it can start right here to embark on a perilous but priceless musical journey into the darkest and most hidden recesses of the human psyche.

2019 – Rain Without Ends Records / Musical Excrements