The Depressick don’t disguise the emotional states that fuel their music. It’s right there in the name they chose, a representation of gloom so deep that the hopelessness becomes illness. It connects with the place they call home, a densely populated and historically impoverished suburb of Mexico City named Nezahualcoyotl. We’re told that the “negativity, misery, poverty, sickness and filth” of their environment contributes to their music’s bleakness.
The band’s gut-wrenching musical journey so far has produced the 2017 debut album Carcinoma and eight shorter releases and splits. And it truly has been a journey. They haven’t forsaken their dark roots in DSBM, but have allowed them to extend into other soils, and the results have become manifest in their forthcoming second album faded.exe, which we’re premiering below in advance of its July 19th release by Tragedy Productions/End My Life Records.
As usual, we want to share our own impressions of the music, but we should begin by sharing these words from The Depressick:
faded.exe is the first album with our new line-up, which includes Sven Kleis (Amimia and Cendre) on drums.
In this installment, we’ve explored more concise compositions and a less atmospheric sound, although we’ve kept some elements and influences characteristic of our previous works.
Conceptually, faded.exe is a collage of personal experiences, an intimate reflection of our internal struggles. The album addresses themes of human nature such as anxiety, the mental fog of everyday life, anger and neurosis, isolation, uncertainty, and fear of a desolate future.
It’s an ocean of negative ideas and emotions that it’s easy to sink into despair.
The title, faded.exe, symbolizes that fading into an inner world full of worries and anguish, where each song is a wave that reflects these personal experiences and negative feelings that prevent happiness. With this album, we invite our listeners to navigate these emotional landscapes.
The cover of the album features the image of a Virgin, representing the Catholic idea of transcendence after pain.
This album leaves in doubt whether there really is relief from suffering or whether existence itself is an endless sea of pain. This ambiguity encapsulates the essence of faded.exe, a journey through anguish and uncertain hope.
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The last paragraph quoted above — that reference to the ambiguity of whether the pain of existence will be endless or might instead be relieved by something short of death — is a very good indication of what the music brings.
On the one hand, the music on faded.exe brings tidal waves of shattering distress, wrenching but immersive, yet on the other hand it also mesmerizes as it reveals moods of fervent yearning and a grasping for some kind of life-preserver, lured on by evanescing visions of ethereal beauty.
That duality (or ambiguity, if you will) is evident in the opening track, aptly named “Shattered Heart“. In its opening rhythm the music deeply thunders and rumbles, the vocals scald, and the surrounding sounds, both rough and glistening, swirl and sear in whirring and whistling deliriums of despair. It moves like an over-driven heart, burning in torment and soaring like beseeching pleas.
The music also does feel like tides of pain, cresting and falling, pulling the listener in with its powerful undertows and crashing spray. Yet before it ends, the music markedly changes. The rhythm section and the vocalist vanish, and gently moaning tones slowly warble, like the meandering of a tide pool on the shore.
From there, after the rhythm section return with warm humming tones and skipping beats, the music begins to glisten in a more hopeful and entrancing way.
In the songs that follow, The Depressick continue to rush and pause along the edge of their abysses, sometimes falling into them with limbs flailing and screams erupting, and sometimes longingly gazing at something brighter on the far side, something seemingly out of reach but not entirely out of mind.
The sound quality also continues to straddle a divide, incorporating near-clean tones that sparkle and shimmer but also choking the lungs with miasmas of scratchy sandpaper grit. The vocals remain scarring, the kind of raw, splintered howls and blood-spray screams that in their agonies don’t seem to hold anything back.
And the rhythm section continue to be a viscerally potent presence, the deep throbbing and undulating bass a vital force, and the drumwork shifting among gripping variations as the band shift the moods. At times (as in “HCI“), the band use electronics to bring the beats, adding variety to their palette of sounds.
Speaking of “HCI“, it’s one of the most stylistically and sonically varied songs on the album, and a clear standout. Like a hybrid of depressive black metal, post-punk, and post-rock (as I hear it), it also also spans a broad range of emotions as it gets the listener’s pulse pumping. There’s even joy to be found there, along with the dying embers of forsaken hopes.
But the stylistic variations don’t end there. Spoiler-alert: they unexpectedly start rapping in “Papillon (Part I)“, and the slow and somber melody within “Papillon (Part II)” glows as it gently warbles and wails, while the album closer “Gray Ocean” is a hypnotizing and heart-breaking piano instrumental that links us back to the earlier song “Greywave“.
But again, every song, like the album as a whole, is a study in variations and a manifestation of dualities. As the music crosses between the crestfallen harshness of being broken and phases of enthralling and haunting beauty, as it brings the tidal surges and the low ebbs, it deepens the music’s hold.
Whoever came up with the “FFO” comparisons for the album on behalf of the label did a fine job. It’s recommended for fans of Lantlos, Lifelover, Amesoeurs, and White Ward. Those references make a lot of sense.
And with that we’ll leave you to experience a very fine album (if you prefer a YouTube stream, we’ve included that after the links below):
PRE-ORDER:
https://endmyliferecords.bandcamp.com/album/faded-exe
TRAGEDY PRODUCTIONS:
https://www.tragedyproductions.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/tragedyproductions
https://www.instagram.com/tragedyproductions
THE DEPRESSICK:
https://thedepressick.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TheDepressick/
https://www.instagram.com/the_depressick/