FOLLOWING SEA

Third or fourth album ever since the band came back from its two-year break, but dEUS never seemed to regain the momentum of their early days ? a momentum they'd lost before going on holidays anyway. Don't get me wrong, none of their albums are bad or even average, but they simply don't have what made WCS or IiBUtS so special. Indeed when listening to the present FS, it's kind of difficult to point it out quickly as a dEUS album, despite some fine and subtle songwriting. Armed with a passé-partout artwork and booklet that don't seem to have much relation with the album's title (other than a few maritime references here and there), FS keeps the band's fans happy, with more of the same, despite being a bit drowned in the over- flooded ocean.

Opening with the French-sung Quatre Mains (a small radio hit on French-speaking radios, I believe); the band cruises smoothly along with some typical soundscape of theirs with sirens and the spoken Hidden Wounds. Somewhere between Radiohead or some other Britpop of the 90's, the album is fairly linear sonic-wise, but sufficiently varied to avoid repetition, but doesn't avoid the déjà-entendu feel. Highlights are Girls Keep Drinking, Quatre Mains, the vocal-filtered Fire Up. Anti-climaxes are the aptly-titled Nothings, the nearly-U2 Soft Fall, the predictable Crazy About You and the album closing About Waves.

Never really understood hat this band was doing on PA, but since they're here and I seem sufficiently interested to borrow their later albums from the library, I thought I might as well tell you that you progheads won't find much susceptible to tickle your prog fancy, but this "alternative rock" disc is hardly a bad album? just another one that followed the train to sea of oblivion.