Fluisteraars – 'Kronieken Van Het Verdwenen Kasteel – III – Grunsfoort'

Stream the single here.

This is intensive and very good music with either a lot of thought behind it or a lot of luck. Fluisteraars is a black-metal band based in the Netherlands. Apparently there's something in the water over there, because the region seems to spawn some really interesting bands, for example Turia and Lubbert Das. I must confess that I'm week for bands on the Haeresis Noviomagi label. Back to the topic:

This song is eight minutes and twenty seconds long. First, an airy intro with synths that made me think of Steve Roach and suddenly: onslaught.

The cymbals and the snare drum ring out while the bass, thrumming in the background, makes for a great spine to carry the colossus that is the main guitar melody track. This is some hypnotic shit! Usually, black metal isn't this enticing. The closest I can come to thinking of another interesting band is probably Cistvaen, although the genre is filled with a lot of weird and very good bands.

I love how Fluisteraars go from super-heavy to dropping the tempo by half and then laying down some three-note acoustic nylon-stringed guitar. Then back to the onslaught.

The song is screams, howls, and I can only hope the lyrics are good because Dutch is a language I do not speak. I like both how the singer phrases and paces himself between slower, more silent moments and then going for full-tilt screams.

Nearly six minutes into the track, everything goes fairly quiet. Distant sounds are heard – some drums, some sweeping metallic swoops, water-and-glass. Then: a scream. And a trebled-up grinding guitar melody. And the drums. The freaking drums! They're great!

This is some band. Fluisteraars pull off what a lot of black-metal bands try out but fail to do: production meets arrangement bliss. Even the synths are fairly well-tempered here, which rarely is the case with black metal. Either you get zero synths, some drab organ sounds, or really fake-sounding stuff as with Lamp of Murmuur*, but that's not the case with Fluisteraars.

Damn it. I'm going to listen to Fluisteraars's latest album, Manifestaties van de ontworteling, right now.

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