Errant - Errant

By Justin C. O.K., I’m not even gonna pretend I’m not a big fan of Immortal Bird (see, for example, here and here). So when I found out vocalist Rae Amitay was doing a solo project, I expected to like it. Sure, she could have done an album of deathcore-stye Prince covers that might have been hard to learn to love, but I had higher expectations.

By Justin C.


O.K., I'm not even gonna pretend I'm not a big fan of Immortal Bird (see, for example, here and here). So when I found out vocalist Rae Amitay was doing a solo project, I expected to like it. Sure, she could have done an album of deathcore-stye Prince covers that might have been hard to learn to love, but I had higher expectations.

Her self-titled album errant does not disappoint. Playing all the instruments, she brings the fire, feeling, and pathos from Immortal Bird, but shows it to us from a different angle. Album opener "The Amorphic Burden" starts on a subdued, doomy note, but it's not long before the song explodes into a very satisfying, full-tilt riff accompanied by Amitay's unmistakable rasps and growls. Not content to stop there, the song morphs again into an almost sunny-sounding, blackgaze vibe. It's a four-and-a-half minute song with at least three distinct movements. Pretty much what you'd expect from someone of Amitay's compositional skills. (And of course, Amitay still knows her way around a drum kit, throwing in a little off-kilter rhythm here and there to spice things up.)

The second track, "A Vacillant Breath," answered the question I immediately had when I heard about this project: Will Amitay do clean vocals? She does indeed, and she does them extremely well. Not long after I heard this track for the first time, I made a pandemic-terror-run to the grocery store and heard Heart's "These Dreams" over the store's sound system. The fact that I could hear a bit of the Wilson sisters' in Amitay's voice should say a lot about just how good her singing is. (This is also my humble request for a Heart cover on her next album.) The lyrics of "A Vacillant Breath" are a tour through a personal hell of self-loathing, with lines like "If there is a method to hide how deeply I have failed / I've yet to learn it,", but the emotion laid bare in both the clean and harsh vocals elevate the track well above a mere inventory of misery.

She may not cover Heart this time around, but we do get a cover of Failure's excellent track "Saturday Savior." If you don't know Failure, that's understandable because they never got the attention they deserved, but let this cover be an introduction. Amitay does a pitch-perfect take on Ken Andrews's vocals, and although the track isn't as ferocious as the EP's other three songs, the mood it sets is a fitting closure to a damn-near perfect debut. I want more of this. A lot more. Please?

Déhà - A fleur de peau - I - There Is No Home

By Master of Muppets. Single track albums can be a bit of a tough sell. Attention spans being something of an endangered species, the shuffle button rules over many with an iron fist and the idea of committing more than 3 minutes of one's life to a single song is tantamount to lunacy these days.

By Master of Muppets.


Single track albums can be a bit of a tough sell. Attention spans being something of an endangered species, the shuffle button rules over many with an iron fist and the idea of committing more than 3 minutes of one's life to a single song is tantamount to lunacy these days. So it goes, yet - surprise, surprise - sometimes artists don't particularly care about what you want when they're making things, and sometimes artists do make things which defy today's patience deprived listening climate; Déhà's A Fleur de Peau - I - There is No Home is one of those things. It may not necessarily be your thing, but if it turns out that it is then trust me: it's really gonna be your thing.

Just what kind of thing is that? For starters, A Fleur de Peau is, obviously, a single track album. Sure, it's presented as 'Parts I - VI', with said chapters being given titles and everything, yet this 41 minute ride is solely offered as one cohesive listening experience: if you want to listen to any of it, you're listening to all of it. In the name of full disclosure, I'll also confess that if you've heard some of A Fleur de Peau, you've heard most of it: the track/suite/album largely operates around one core melody, sustained for the entirety of its duration. A Fleur de Peau is a single moment in time stretched out into something sprawling and unforgiving, it does not care about your feelings or your attention span, aside from its mission to strangle the former and bleed the latter dry. As I've stated, this album is not for everyone, but if it's for you it's likely really for you.

Just who is this thing for, anyway? In a word: me. In a few more words: fans of NONE, Vvilderness and Unreqvited. There is no happiness to be heard amidst these shrieks and tremolo-picked guitars, and though the atmosphere that Déhà has created here is as cold and jagged as it gets, it is also tender, wounded in its own right. At its core, A Fleur de Peau is atmospheric black metal of the DSBM variety, with slight traces of sludge mixed in to keep things properly oppressive. Clean, brooding guitars get things started and occasionally resurface along the way, but by and large this soundscape is awash with distortion and screams, a world of sheer despair. Unbridled agony and a plea for its cessation is what Déhà has for us today, and if you haven't been scared off yet it's likely that you've arrived at the doorstep of your musical home.

Normally I'd have more things to say at this point in a review, but ordinarily I'd also have more songs to discuss and these are not normal times, so I don't… Or do I? I really don't, but Déhà does: while you're at his Bandcamp page, check out the recently released Just Stay at Home single posted there. Apparently Déhà hates COVID-19 just as much as the rest of us, his gripes just sound better. Written as a means to vent his own frustrations regarding the coronapocalypse, eventually the track will find a home on a future Déhà album, provided The Great Toilet Paper Famine doesn't kill us all, but for now it's as good a way as any to channel your disgust as we ride out this pandemic in isolated solidarity. Honestly, if blackened post hardcore decrying a plagued humanity doesn't isn't what the doctor ordered, then frankly your doctor sucks.

A Fleur de Peau is, for the millionth time, not for everyone. It is not for the deficient of attention, nor is it for the casual black metal fan. Those without patience or a penchant for pure, pummeling pessimism will find little to love here - and that's just fine. However, those listeners whose tastes dwell in darkness and dream of the end are likely to find something to be cherished in these 40-some minutes, a haunted and hateful home of their own.

Wake - Devouring Ruin

By Matt Hinch. Wake's previous album, Misery Rites, should have garnered the attention of anyone who hadn't been paying attention already. It was a potent blend of black metal and grinding madness. Anyone who thought new album, Devouring Ruin was going to follow the same formula would be wrong.

By Matt Hinch.

Artwork by Alexandre Goulet.

Wake's previous album, Misery Rites, should have garnered the attention of anyone who hadn't been paying attention already. It was a potent blend of black metal and grinding madness. Anyone who thought new album, Devouring Ruin was going to follow the same formula would be wrong. Sure, those key elements are present and accounted for but they've further honed their melodic touches and technicality and shifted in a more deathly direction.

Opener “Dissolve and Release” opens the listener's ears with a fairly melodic section but the hammer has to drop, right? It does with the force of a Prairie blizzard leading into “Kana Tevoro (Kania! Kania!)”. Technicality and off-kilter riffing compete with blasting drums and chest-caving vocals. As claustrophobic as it sounds the solos are quite expansive while still grounded in darkness.

Elsewhere we find demons unleashed. Fast, angry, and destructive. Vocals breaks and a slower pace rub elbows with more impact riffing. The back and forth between annihilation and lamentation feels more like reality than some bands one-vector approach. “Mouth of Abolition” features devastating deathgrind sewn together with prog touches and melody. The vocals, however, give no quarter amid the pummeling, yet there's enough emotion throughout to pull something out of you.

“Torchbearer” sees an atmosphere of doom devolve into noisy paranoia. A slow chug drags the listener through swamps of death before it rockets into black metal fury. There's really a lot more than just that as this track tops 10 minutes! Not too typical for grind! I don't think anyone has accused Wake of being typical.

“In the Lair of the Rat Kings” balances their signature grinding madness with some flourish. It's a banger though; total annihilation with some real heavy movement. It leads right into the penultimate track, “Monuments to Impiety”. More rage, more speed, more angularity, more heavy-handed groove.

Other than its runtime of over seven minutes closer “The Procession” brings together all the elements present in the previous nine tracks (save the two “noisy/arty” interludes). It encapsulates all the deathly weight, speed changes and bulging muscularity Devouring Ruin is built upon. It even feels like a conclusion (to the album). It has a climactic feel like it's rising, freed from the ground it so mercilessly pounds.

Wake are seriously making a name for themselves. Not only in the grind scene but as one of Canada's best extreme acts. With Devouring Ruin they are elevating an already top shelf game. This is a band not content to sit on their laurels and remain in a comfortable zone. They're pushing themselves and genre conventions and we are all the beneficiaries.