Album Type: Full Length
Date Released:
10/02/2017
Label: Consouling Sounds
I cannot find any fault with this
album. It is a rending and harrowing masterpiece, and I recommend it
without reservation. At first, I found myself missing the longer songs of the
debut, but the stripped out agony that this tighter piece represents is just
brilliant...and gutting. Get it
“De Doden
Hebben Het Goed II” CD//DD//LP track listing:
1. Ontzielling (07:32)
2. Cataract (11:11)
3. De Doden Hebben Het Goed II (08:29)
4. Smeekbede (06:13)
2. Cataract (11:11)
3. De Doden Hebben Het Goed II (08:29)
4. Smeekbede (06:13)
The Review:
There
is something sublimely overwhelming about Wiegedood's
approach to black metal; listening to “De Doden Hebben Het Goed” for me
felt like slowly being battered to death by waves while simultaneously being
dragged down by undertow. The sublimity here, however, comes from the sense
of willingly letting go and being carried down into death by those
black oceans. And why not? "The dead are faring well," as Wiegedood
tell us.
“De Doden
Hebben Het Goed II” refines and enhances this sense of black metal rip tides and
heavy, perilous gravity. More sparse than the debut album, but retaining the
same pummelling undercurrents layered sinister melodic whorls and eddies, this
album feels like a titration and distillation of the bleak poetics of Wiegedood's
earlier work. This album is short; 33:25 in total length. But it has a
definitive narrative arc that is compelling and elegantly structured. Opener “Ontzielling”
rushes out at the listener, tsunami-like and unrelenting. This is the
first immersion into violent, dark and frigid waters. “Cataract”
conjures both the sense of the rushing flow of these waters and the deepening
of that darkness through encroaching blindness. This track crescendos,
then crashes and ebbs into the resignation and resolution
of “De Doden Hebben Het Goed II.” Deep solemnity pervades the
title track on the album, itself in: let yourself go, do not fight this
drowning, the dead are doing well, join them. In the end, we return to
deep grief and tragedy: supplication, pleading, begging – “Smeekbede”.
This final song feels like the mourning and keening of those left behind
by this death; a final howl, an agonising cry.
I
cannot find any fault with this album. It is a rending and
harrowing masterpiece, and I recommend it without reservation. At first, I
found myself missing the longer songs of the debut, but the stripped out agony
that this tighter piece represents is just brilliant...and gutting. Get it.
“De Doden Hebben Het Goed
II” is
available to buy/preorder here
