Despair not, my friends, this is not gonna hurt. But there is definitely Despair, in this case we’re talking about the Syrian black metal/ambient duo hailing from Damascus, although ..sort of, as the one half of this black metal duo evidently resides in Germany in these days.
Still, it counts as Syrian in my book, so let’s have a look at their output.
After their 2011 split with the similar Syrian ex-pats in Germany, Eulen, Despair released their first – and to date, only – album, “Depersonalization” in the same year.
What to say about it? 6 tracks clock in almost 39 minutes, and although the opening “Obsession of Existence” is quite generic sounding raw-ish black metal, it was the second track, “Deprival Perception”, which has fully caught my attention.
Interestingly, I wouldn’t even call it black metal, as this track is close to Cathedral on their debut “Forest of Equilibrium” (one of my fave albums, by the way) than to what one perceives as the music from hell.
Use of the accoustic instrumental intermezzos is employed in the next track, “Blind Delerium” too, which, by the way, is the longest song on the album with the straight 8 minutes of playtime. The slow, hypnotic tempo and the jagged distorted guitar recalls Burzum on its “Filosofem” era, but luckily, it’s not a cheap carbon copy. Which means, fans of the aforementioned album might be delighted. And luckily, Despair doesn’t add enough of their own to make the song interesting.
And it works for me.
Unfortunately, though, the rest of album doesn’t step further developing the writing pattern and “Infinitive for Decay” and “Ego Threat” both sound just repetitive. Which might work as a kind of weird meditation music (why not?), but I’m not of that sort of people, sorry.
Not to forget, “Depersonalization”, the track giving this release its name, is a calm, ambient piece, and although it stands out of the rest of the album, it kind of fits in here. Nice track, indeed.
So, what to say at the end… Despair’s “Depersonalization” is not a bad album. Nor it’s a release you can’t live without. If you like to seek out stuff from exotic places and give obscure artists a chance, then it’s worth checking it out.
