I think it is fair to say that the sudden announcement declaring the end of The Devil’s Blood came as a bit of a surprise and not a good one at all. I was honoured to have seen and photographed the band live a few times and they made such a profound and moving impact on me, one that having seen hundreds of bands over the years is very difficult to invoke, that I immediately felt a big void due to the fact that I would never see them again. Of course bands split up time and again only to reform a couple of years later BUT this seemed very much a final decree and it left little room for any future reversal; anyway statements that have come from them in the past have always struck as genuine and honest and I have little doubt that this really will be it. One can only hypothesise why this turn of events occurred, it will probably never be shared but as far as I am concerned it was a band where all members apart from Selim and Farida Lemouchi were dispensable so I can only speculate that one of them was not prepared to carry on down the path they had made. This also meant that album III: Tabula Rasa or Death and the Seven Pillars would be released unfinished and as no copies were sent out for review to the press the only way anyone is going to hear how it follows up the previous two excellent albums is going to be by buying it.
Out of every bit of bad news comes some hope and this arrived in the announcement that Selim was continuing with a new band and material would be forthcoming. This has now arrived in the form of a mini album of three tracks ‘Mens Animus Corpus’ (Mind Body Soul) and of course I was as eager as anyone to hear how it would compare. As to who else is playing in the band and doing what, we are told that Selim is responsible for most of what we hear and his enemies are “a never stagnant group of colleagues, friends and artists.” The group’s official page simply lists an amusing “fuck you” under genre, for good measure.
First track Eschaton is a slow one bringing the doom and plodding along with some soulful clean harmonic vocals. As it is nine minutes long I expected it to up the ante and take a more substantial form as it progressed but it simply meanders and hangs in the air like a hazy cloud of smoke. It’s music to fire up the bong to and nod along but honestly unless you are in that sort of state this 70’s sounding mainly instrumental noodling is pretty damn dull stuff. I was reminded of a group of people wearing funny cardigans on The Old Grey Whistle Test by this exercise of pure self-indulgence. Still it’s only one song, what about the next Thistle? With a title like that I expected it to be prickly but we are very much in the same era musically. Thankfully it’s a bit more upbeat and with the vocals I was instantly thinking of Syd Barrett, it’s all very Floydian which is no bad thing but again whilst it is perfect to mong out to there is a real lack of drive and energy about it. All fair enough but having disbanded something truly unique and wonderful I couldn’t but help expect something a bit more!
Final track ‘Your Way Down’ is left to wow me and thankfully it does partly do so. This is a purely instrumental exercise in, space rock overload as a barrage of drums takes us into a heady driven psyche out that is jammed away to perfection. If this is your thing, i.e. if you love old Hawkwind and their ilk which luckily I do, you are going to no doubt like this a lot. If not you will probably find it torturous as it goes on for just shy of 14 minutes! Yes it comes back to that remark of self-indulgence again and this whole affair simply reeks of it albeit in a very patchouli flavoured scent. Naturally this leaves it very difficult to mark and to form an opinion of it overall. To be fair I left this review and gave this a couple of extra listens to see if it made me change my opinion. I certainly would not want to be termed as an enemy but this just hasn’t provided the wow factor I was hoping for. Although I’m intrigued to hear what’s to come next but I won’t be waiting with baited breath.
(5.5/10 Pete Woods)
https://www.facebook.com/Selim.lemouchi.and.his.enemies
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