dEUS – How To Replace It

You under-estimate dEUS at your peril. One of the first Belgian rock bands to truly break internationally, their progressive take on guitar music operates without boundaries. Spending two decades together, the band drifted back to the sidelines, re-grouping and undergoing subtle evolution in the shadows. Their first new album in more than 10 years, ‘How To Replace It’ presents a band renewed, offering daring forward paths in the process.

Opening with the title cut, ‘How To Replace It’ is a bravura statement, a moment of pure, unrelenting directness. dEUS follow this with the crunching, 90s leaning ‘Must Have Been New’ before broadening on the ambitious, neo-orchestral ‘Man Of The House’ which pivots between industrial percussive attack and squealing guitar lines.

Frontman Tom Barman is in fine voice throughout. ‘1989’ has a yacht rock lilt, while ‘Pirates’ say, glows with a beatific beauty. There are bold ideas here, naturally, but dEUS retain a unique knack of placing them in an open, engaging setting.

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Indeed, it’s the full band format which makes the record so riveting. ‘Never Get You High’ rests on a gleeful hop, while the sloping bassline that propels ‘Cadillac’ is mirrored by – of all things – layers of sitar. There are disparate colours, here, but it remains unfussy, endearingly unprecise – what Barman calls “a really rough, ragged, dirty sound…”

A record that feels huge in every sense, ‘How To Replace It’ finds dEUS facing up to their past and refusing to be hemmed in by it. At times daring, at others direct, this feels like the work of a band with nothing to prove. Undaunted and fearless, it closes with ‘Le Blue Polaire’ – sung entirely in French, it boasts some incredibly filthy guitar tones, dirtier than a six string that’s been left to linger in the Seine for a decade. Perhaps that’s where dEUS have been lurking – before emerging renewed, and reactivated.

8/10

Words: Robin Murray

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