Départe - Failure, Subside

As soon as the album started I knew this was going to be a good one. There were a couple of surprises, but the introduction doesn’t lie about where this record is going.

As an avid fan of catastrophic black metal such as Plebeian Grandstand (which have a very similar feeling at some moments), the opening was a welcome apocalypse of guitar noise to my ears. As soon as the vocals hit, I instantly saw a dying, tortured man dressed in rags. The cymbal work caught my ear, and the man behind the kit knows what he’s doing. More about him later.

Clean vocals come into play after a couple of minutes, and took me by surprise. I was hoping they wouldn’t be there – I often find they’re out of place – but by the middle of my first listen I was converted. They’re not eerie at all, it’s more of a melancholic hopelessness, which works with the way the album’s written. It’s worth noting the singer’s range is also quite decent, managing to hit those rare lower octaves.

While the songs themselves have dynamics, one could reduce them to “just” being crescendos. However, it’s the way the album itself is written that is more interesting. It almost feels like narrative composition, during which hope is lost and mourned for, anger follows and a challenger finally ends it all. The album takes place in a desolate forest with a reverberating mist suffocating every sound, and the listener is completely lost and terrified from start to end.

None of this takes away from the individual songs themselves – the dissonance is constant and beautiful in its own way. As the album progresses, there seem to be more and more layers of guitar, which end up enveloping you like an icy blanket.

On a tangential note, the album cover’s style is reminiscent of Celeste – artistic black & white shots without text, even though they are missing the characteristic girl’s face.

Giuseppe Fitzsimmons

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