..Whirlwind

Déçu (French: "Disappointed") may be the project's name but though its avowed core music style is depressive BM, there's not much in Déçu's debut album "… Whirlwind" that will disappoint curious listeners. Aggression, anger and energy are as much present as are despair and gloom, and the balance between the more active, outwardly directed emotions and the passive, inward moods help provide the tension that powers "… Whirlwind" all the way through the six songs on offer. A solo act, helmed by multi-instrumentalist / vocalist Hugo Carmouze, Déçu plays a raw and harsh lo-fi brand of depressive BM with a surprisingly clean production that forces you to hear every bit of bristly, jarring sound, no matter how much discomfort this will cause. Though the emotions can be intense, even slightly oppressive, the music is usually fast-flowing and dramatic, rushing you along and building up energy and even vigour in its drama. Individual tracks may have folk influences drawn from Carmouze's background and environment – he is based in the Occitanian region, in southern France bordering the Pyrenees – and these folk elements add a distinct flavour to the music.

"Être dans tes bras" ("To be in your arms") opens the album in fine rollicking style, though it is repetitive for most of its running time. The main riff has a clean sound, even though played vibrato style, which makes it angular and heightens the sense of isolation or loss of a loved one. The guitar and frizzly sound all but bury the vocals and listeners may just catch screams and shrieks in the distant background behind the whirling grit. "Dors, ne souffre plus" ("Sleep, suffer no more") strikes a darker tone in a continuous cascade of tremolo guitar noise and the vocals fight even more desperately to be heard. Initially songs follow a basic structure of one or a few riffs repeating over and over, usually at a fast pace, with percussion banging away behind the music and faint, skeletal voices crying even farther in the black distance. One exception is middle track " Dormir sous les sanglots. (Berceuse I)" ("Sleeping under the sobs. (Lullaby I)") which is slower and more melancholy than the others, and allows the repeating riffs to change and expand into more complex patterns that compete with the original riff and turn the song into an enthralling if darkly ride. Ambient details at the start and end of the song add mystery.

The last couple of tracks take up at least half the album's run-time and have an experimental bent in the way they seem to pound their respective sounds and sound structures into something completely different, intense and emotionally devastating through nothing more than sheer repetition. The first of these, "Today I realized about how much destruction reminded me of you", is a desperate and turbulent affair of crushing layers of rapid-fire tremolo noise guitar riffing. The voices in the distance seem even more desperate and tormented than ever as the shrill music literally chops them up no matter how prolonged the screams are. The mood is urgent, as though the entire world through the lens of the son is teetering on the edge of falling into utter madness. The track ends in a short, crazed passage of industrial noise. Outro track "Glaciale Décadence des Lamentations" ("Frozen Decay of Laments") is a depressed whirring hell of black industrial ambient that reveals unexpected beauty and calm in its droning machine grind textures.

With the music dividing into two distinct halves – the first half being more conventional in presentation, the second half containing more unstructured and immersive soundscapes – the album really does offer something for everyone and moreover shows the potential for depressive BM to be much more than morose, repetitive expressions of a limited set of negative emotions. The album expands from what appears to be a personal journey in dealing with depression, to a level where not only society and humanity, but the very cosmos itself must confront inner darkness, pain and chaos. We are left with the suggestion that this will be a never-ending battle within ourselves, and outside of ourselves.

In spite of the repetition, I found this album to be very absorbing and hypnotic in its textures and depths. Little details like short ambient trails at the start and end of tracks are part of Carmouze's bag of tricks which he deploys with a deft and restrained hand. For a debut album, "… Whirlwind" is not too short nor too long in what it does, and at the end you're left hungering after more.