Tag Archives: Netherlands
Sammath – Across The Rhine Is Only Death (2019)
I read somewhere that metal as opposed to rock n roll is thought over feeling, meaning that the metal musician feels first and then reasons upon that initial feeling to come up with an expression of his intellect. It is … Continue reading →
A Sinister trek through the last fifteen years
One of the most rhythmically expressive of all death metal bands, Sinister‘s career trajectory is widely assumed to have flatlined after classics like Cross the Styx, Diabolical Summoning, and Hate in the 90s. Frequent line-up changes, to the extent that … Continue reading →
Death Metal Battle Royale Round 2: Sinister’s Cross The Styx vs Deicide’s Legion
This Round 2 battle pitches two albums similarly intense in death metal rhythm guitar playing. Sinister, and Dutch death metal in general, were inspired by genre developments in North america, and perhaps in no small portion by Deicide themselves. … Continue reading →
Neocaesar – 11:11 (2017)
Year 2017 presents an interesting clash between former cohorts in death metal. Sinister, containing only Aad Kloosterwaard from the original lineup, have released Syncretism; Neocaesar, on the other hand, are a band formed from some of the most significant personnel … Continue reading →
Urfaust – Empty Space Meditation (2016)
Empty Space Meditation is an album for the winter months. Each song here is a demonstration of a unique and not-always metal-related style of music. Equally at home among dark ambient, black metal, funeral doom’s homophonic dirge, gothic rock, and neoclassical … Continue reading →
Death Metal Battle Royale Round 1: Sinister’s Cross The Styx vs Molested’s Blod Draum
Impressionistic appraisal: Sinister’s Cross The Styx (1992) Intro ‘Carnificina Seclesta‘ may as well carry Dante Alighieri’s subtext: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here“, for what follows is one of the most “satanic” death metal albums ever recorded. If … Continue reading →
Ten years later, putrefaction still in progress
Putrefaction In Progress was a real assault on the senses when it was released ten years ago. Last Days Of Humanity were always a goregrind band a cut more extreme than most others, but on this album, they morphed into … Continue reading →
Lubbert Das – Deluge (2015)
This two song EP starts with a melange of dark ambient before ushering in noisy, tape-quality black metal proper. There seems equal likelihood of Lubbert Das coming to prefer either of these two musical routes in the future but for … Continue reading →
Kaeck – Stormkult (2015)
Kaeck‘s Stormkult is a bonafide black metal blitzkrieg but some of the more intriguing questions it poses exist on a level external to what’s heard on record. Emotions mature over time; hate and discontent of the mind in particular are gradually … Continue reading →
Sammath – Godless Arrogance (2014)
Sammath sidestep the distracting glamours that have come to represent black metal in popular consciousness, instead staring down the listener with an unremittingly caustic visage and daring him to turn face. The process that started on Dodengang is now complete … Continue reading →