dEUS: Belgium’s best loved band re-release their top songs Indie-rock heroes dEUS were the first Belgian band to sign a record deal with a major international record company. Two decades and six albums later, Tom Barman has curated a special compilation album of their greatest work entitled Selected Songs – 1994-2014. TEXT: HELLEN CULLEN | MAIN PHOTO: STEPHAN VANFLETEREN
“We hesitated between calling it a Best Of or Greatest Hits,” singer and front man Barman explains. “The songs are probably the ones I would choose for people to listen to who have never heard of dEUS as they are probably the most interesting. If a ‘Best Of’ can find help us find an audience that hasn’t heard of us, that’s fantastic.” Although this special compilation may serve as a launch pad for new fans to discover the dEUS back catalogue, Barman worked very hard to create a collection that would have meaning for the legions of
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fans that already adore them. The band’s first three albums sold in excess of 750,000 copies worldwide and they have enjoyed an international cult following ever since. After twenty years of performing their unique blend of folk, punk, jazz and progressive rock, they continue to amass incredible critical acclaim for every new recording and attract fans in their thousands at shows worldwide.
Selecting songs With such an immense collection of material to draw from, a double album seemed
the best format to fairly represent the breadth of the band’s work. Barman shared the rationale behind their creative thinking, “We always knew that we were going to do a double album because we wanted to bring out the softer songs, the ballads, separately. There were two reasons for that; one is that they almost never become a single and the second reason is that actually I think the softer songs are some of our best. If you play them all together it shows a whole other side of us that was always there, and which the diehard fans know about, but was never