Author Andrew Doherty
Saturday 1st October Inhalo from the host country started proceedings on this rainy Saturday afternoon. The funky sound of an American tv drama theme struck up. The Netherlands is a factory for great and usually unknown prog bands, and here… Continue Reading →
Forget the collaboration between Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran. You probably have forgotten already. Here’s the real dream team: [ówt krì] and Pigments. These masters of electronic sound art from Finland have come together for this work. The dream may… Continue Reading →
Introduction and Friday 30th September And so we’re back. I have come to this event most years since 2006, and always have a great time. Travelling across Europe to this delightful and largely unknown part of the Netherland is straightforward,… Continue Reading →
This album may be about the area between life and death but this band from the Netherlands decidedly plays black metal.” Façade” is Asgrauw’s fifth album release. Anger and slashing people with razors is the thought that came into my… Continue Reading →
Even Flow is a progressive metal band of some pedigree, having been formed in the late 1990s, with a couple of albums and other material to their name and an extensive touring history, plus collaborations with members of Fates Warning,… Continue Reading →
“Givre” means frost in French, which gives an immediate clue as to what to expect. The band from the French-Canadian black metal factory have released two previous albums. I don’t know what the longest ever track title is but the… Continue Reading →
I know that “lagu” means song in Malay. The “song” in this case comes from French band Caïnan Dawn who bring us meditative cold wave black metal music, tales of immersive vastness and infinite waves of the soul. It starts… Continue Reading →
By way of preparation for this album, I listen to this Polish artist’s earlier EP “Inter Spem et Metum”. Utterly dark, violent in parts and straight out of the playbook of dirty blackened death, it is impressive. For “Temporal Capsule”… Continue Reading →
This is a band I didn’t know previously, but finding out that they come from a familiar stable of Québecois black metal gave me immediate confidence. Précieux Sang have been around since 2019. The black metal style here is classic… Continue Reading →
I’m not sure how absurdist and existential philosophy, which themselves sit at opposite ends of the spectrum, lend them particularly to death metal but I guess we’re going to find out. Phobophilic from Fargo, North Dakota draw from the thinking… Continue Reading →
This nu-apocalyptic metal crew has, as they put it, come a long way since the Axe and Cleaver in Boston, Lincolnshire over 10 years ago. Doing time in pubs and clubs is character-building and helps to develop all bands, so… Continue Reading →
“Causa Sui” is this French band’s debut album. It took four years to make it. Ahasver, as well as being the name of the band, is the mythical immortal man. The only way to translate this in any way to… Continue Reading →