Déhà - Cruel Words

This isn’t a review.

This is a thank you.

A love letter to a piece of music that found me at a time when I was unraveling,

and simply said:

Stay a bit.

 

Cruel Words isn’t new. It came out in 2019.

I didn’t discover it on release. I didn’t plan to write about it.

I listened to it because I was in pain.

Because something in me was breaking open and I needed something—anything—to make it through the noise.

And this album did.

It held space.

It held me.

And when I finally said that out loud, the only response was:

 

"That’s the goal.

It’s supposed to heal."

 

So no. This isn’t a review.

This is gratitude.

For the sound that caught me.

For the voice that didn’t flinch.

For the silence it gave back to me, when I needed it most.

My first encounter with Déhà was when Jazz told me to go and listen to Slow's album V - Oceans.

Which I did.

And it was so easy to fall in love with that music. Still is.

It remains one of the most comforting sounds I know—when life gets too loud and you need something massive to drown out the voices in your head.

 

Then came Nethermost & Absolute Comfort a couple of weeks ago, and that one took me somewhere darker.

It made me look at things I normally don’t.

Let the pain in.

Confront it.

Sit with it grinning deviously—and smile back.

Which I did.

We’re friends now.

 

And now—Cruel Words.

And again, finding the right words is so difficult.

It’s different.

It’s not drowning you in sound like V - Oceans.

It’s not slamming you into the wall like Nethermost & Absolute Comfort.

 

This album doesn’t try to save you.

It just sits next to you, like a friend would,

and says:

“Hold on. Breathe for a moment.”

 

This album is a gift.

A very precious one. 

It all started with Blackness in May.

That was the first one I listened to.

And I wasn’t in a good place.

The voices were loud.

The heart was heavy—the kind of heavy that folds you into yourself just to stop the breaking.

I was curled up. Small. Trying to hold together.

And then the song begins.

It’s Déhà, practically sitting beside you.

No words. Just gently strumming a guitar. For three minutes.

No drama. No crescendo. Just presence.

And the relief is immediate.

Something in your brain exhales.

You turn away from the edge. You turn towards the sound.

Then the choral voices enter—quiet, sacred, almost weightless.

Ethereal. Like light through stained glass.

And then the song rises.

It doesn’t explode. It breaks.

And the voice breaks with it. Pained. Raw.

And somehow—that’s the relief.

Because he’s shouting out what you can’t say yet.

 

—

I Am Mine To Break.

What a title.

What a quiet little detonation, tucked into a sentence.

There’s no drama in this track.

Just a clean, gentle guitar line.

And Déhà’s voice—unfiltered, honest, almost too vulnerable to touch.

No layers. No performance. Just him.

It doesn’t ask you to listen.

It just starts.

It sits in your chest and burns.

It’s the song you play when you need to take your power back—

not in some triumphant, stomping way.

But in the quiet moment when you realise you’ve been holding all the pieces of your own ruin

and now, maybe, you want to decide what to do with them.

| A promise to heal for my sake

| A promise which is mine to break.

And just like that, you’re gutted. 

 

—

Pain Is A Wasteland starts with this everlooping melody.

Simple. Hypnotic.

Like being rocked into stillness by something that doesn’t love you, but knows how to hold you anyway.

There’s a bassline that tugs—slow, deliberate—at the place right behind your ribs.

It doesn’t ask for attention.

It just wraps around you and waits.

The first half lets you drift.

You lose time inside it.

Not peaceful. Just—detached.

And then the shift.

Halfway through, it starts to crack.

And then he screams.

Not performance. Not theatre.

Just pain, pouring out like it finally got permission.

And you can feel the moment he stops caring about how it sounds—because he’s not doing it for you.

He’s doing it because there’s no other way to keep breathing.

And I’m right there with him.

Because this?

This is the song to walk tall to.

To grit your teeth, own your wreckage, and walk through the fire—without flinching.

 

—

Butterflies starts small.

Stripped down. Intimate.

Just a looping guitar line that feels like it was meant for you only.

Then come the choral vocals—soft, layered, aching.

There’s a tenderness in them. A weightlessness.

But underneath? The tension builds. Quietly. Relentlessly.

You hear it in the drums.

In the subtle shift of breath.

In the way his voice starts to strain—just slightly, like it’s holding something back that won’t stay held.

And then it breaks.

The kind of breaking that feels like truth.

This is the moment that makes you clutch your chest.

Because it’s too close. Too honest.

It doesn’t let go. And maybe it’s not supposed to.

 

—

Dead Butterflies is the understated masterpiece.

Twelve minutes long. Quiet. Unassuming.

It never tries to be anything.

And yet—it carries everything.

This one gets dark.

Gritty.

Bleak.

But never threatening.

At first—there’s a softness in it.

Piano melodies, sparse and breath-like.

Then—distorted guitars that don’t crash—they hum like grief pressed into a wall.

A voice that doesn’t reach for you, but doesn’t let go either.

There’s nothing clever about this track.

No grand movement. No build.

Just presence.

It asks you to sit still.

And if you do—

if you actually let it in—

it begins to thread the pieces of you back together.

Not all at once. Not with ceremony.

But stitch by stitch.

Tiny, almost imperceptible healing.

Like something you didn’t notice was bleeding until it wasn’t anymore.

If I had to pick a favourite on this album—

this would be it.

Because it doesn’t want to be. 

 

—

And finally—Cruel Words.

The title track.

The one that doesn’t explain anything, but still says it all.

The vocals are distorted, breaking apart under their own weight.

There’s screaming. Wailing.

Behind it—layers.

Choral voices. Strings that ache.

Drums that don’t drive so much as hold it all in place. 

And somehow, in all that wreckage—something opens.

 

The smallest bloom in a ruined field.

Rising out of ash.

Not defiantly.

Just—because it can.

Despite everything.

Because everything.

And in the end, it brings me back—

to that quiet, ruined place,

and my own truth:

 

I. AM. MINE. TO. BREAK.

And because I can never leave well enough alone—

I listened to the acoustic reprise as well.

It features a cover of The Gathering’s Saturnine—a good song, always was.

But here, in this context—It becomes something else entirely.

Something better.

Something earned.

 

And then—Comfort Me II.

This one made me stop.

Rewind.

Play it again.

Because somewhere in the middle of it,

so quiet, so soft—

 

| My arms are a fortress of love.

| No cries.

 

And I just sat there.

Frozen.

Hold on.

Did he just—

Did he actually just say "My arms are a fortress of love”?

Who does that?

Who writes that?

Who means it?

He meant it.

And it floored me.

Not because it’s perfect.

But because it’s true.

That one line wrecked me in a way I didn’t see coming.

And I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

Right.

That’s enough vulnerability for one day.

I’m off to cry into coffee and pretend I’m emotionally stable.

 

New wreckage incoming. Stay tuned.