You have growth records and you have GROWTH records. My first encounter with this Brussels psychedelic post-metal trio was, to put it mildly, not very exciting, but after seeing the band live and really letting the music work its magic, something beautiful happened on DEATH.HORSES.BLACK. How exactly that unfolded is best left for the following paragraphs.
You may have seen
My Diligence gracing the posters of Alcatraz or Desertfest in recent years. The band also played with
DVNE at the Botanique in Brussels in 2024 and for this reviewer it was immediately the introduction to the band. The fourth album
DEATH.HORSES.BLACK, out on Listenable records, which also features the likes of
Cobra The Impaler and formerly
Gojira, on its roster is immediately the first to be reviewed on our website.
My Diligence, however, has a sound all its own. The dreamy component in the vocals and the heavy use of effects is both refreshing and alienating. We edge into the murky waters of
Cult Of Luna at their most experimental, but in more bite-sized chunks. The screams are equally reminiscent of Johannes Persson, which is a huge compliment. For instrumentation, we skim between lingering sludge riffs and some more progressive pieces with a delicious post metal sauce poured over them. Yet, there are also some more up-tempo and weird song choices on the album that don’t fit the description.
DEATH.HORSES.BLACK makes you, as well as the fantastic artwork, stay vigilant and looking forward to the next bombastic burst of violence.
It wasn’t always like this. In the beginning, I often found it hard to digest the drums and the atypical song structures. On the lead single HORSES, there is a piece where the floor tom creates an unnecessary disruptive rumble where the previous groove was actually perfect. BLACK then, is a song that is seemingly sown together with fish thread and extrapolates tempos and time signatures as if there were no rules. That’s not always a good thing. BLACK almost comes across like all the 30-second previews on Itunes, but collected in one song. What inspired the band here is perhaps fodder for an interview? However, we shouldn’t throw out the ‘horse’ with the bathwater because this track grows into one of the album’s high points after a few listens.
Naming your album after the first three songs is pretty risqué, because then the other songs risk being forgotten. Surely that happens a bit here, where the first three form a solid unit of progressive psychedelic sludge, with
BLACK being the most experimental, and opener DEATH, the most accessible. Surely
Auspicious breaks abruptly from the previous triptych in its blissful calmness, and the riffs here are also a bit less interesting. The vocals are reminiscent of a lesser
STAKE and the guitar riffs are expansive, plucky and rather sluggish, even towards the end. The instrumental interlude that follows also pales in comparison to the beginning. I don’t understand why an interlude has to last four-and-a-half minutes, but if you can muster the patience,
Allodiplogaster Sudhausi’s blazing start makes up for it all. It is an epic track that drags and lumbers as heavy as it shoots out of the starting grid. We hear
Cult Of Luna in a more melodic guise with a progression and groove that actually rubs close to
ISIS. This song alone gives the second half of the album raison d’être and is immediately the best track we are about to hear. For me, it is also here that the band manages to score points for the first time during my first introduction. On top of that, with this we already have a nomination for the most heavy nematode already in. Pim, Niels, a category to deepen in Osmium perhaps?
Closing track Sacred Anchor starts off almost punky and then leans very much into what Torche is doing with its melodic vocal line and stomping sludge riff. It gives an upbeat finale to a very choppy album with huge peaks and a few exciting valleys.
My Diligence is clearly not your average band, bringing an entirely unique sound to a genre that is nonetheless characterised by its uniformity. The production magnifies this further with the effects on the atypical vocals, the absence of a bass player, a lot of eighties influences and such a stubborn drumming. The fact that not every experiment pays off is quickly mitigated by the highlights. For the unconvinced: ‘in the end, I can’t help but give these guys from Brussels a big fat score’. Their music is refreshing in a genre that desperately needs it. With Allodiplogaster Sudhausi and BLACK, My Diligence has two crackers of songs in not unpleasant ranks. Let’s forget about that insipid interlude, shall we?
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