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I’ve been stalling on this one for a while. Deathspell Omega is one of those bands that releases albums that you never know whether you’ll love or hate them. In that sense they remind me of Enslaved in the past 20 years or so. These French black metallers have been experimenting with their sound for as long as I’ve known them and sometimes their albums were a tough pill to swallow. Interestingly, listening to The Long Defeat, I found myself going back to some of the band’s albums I didn’t like back when they were released (we all love buying an album that we toss away after one listen) and found that I liked them better now. That’s what time does sometimes.

The Long Defeat is not as weird as some of the band’s past releases, which were sometimes a little bit "out there." The songs are pretty long, the shortest being just over 7 minutes and the longest over 11 minutes. The album exhibits a pretty depressing mood overall, which I guess does fit with the current times where it feels like everything around the world is falling apart. That mood is brought home by nice melodic, sorrowful work, though when the vocals kick in, things turn a lot more angry and apocalyptic. Let’s shorten that to "the shit is hitting the fan." That’s kind of what keeps bringing me back to this album. I don’t love it, I don’t hate it, but it somehow fits 2020-2022 like a glove (hopefully we won’t have to add 2023 to that... let’s not bet on it). At the same time, it’s a bit of a drag, with some songs just chugging along and sounding a little monotone in their dark mood. Having just written that, I realize that’s highly representative of the past couple of years. Lots of atmosphere here, nothing remotely positive, so probably best to avoid if you’re feeling especially depressed. This is an album I find hard to describe in words, it’s more of an experience, nothing that’ll get you yelling "fuck yeah!" or get the head banging, just something that sounds like the soundtrack for a gloomy day when the world is going to shit, which, again, is a good fit for the times... Ultimately, this is Deathspell Omega going weird on us once again.