War metal band Kaeck — integrating elegant northern European black metal and technical death metal with its rampaging, atmospheric assault — will make its latest stream, “De kwekeling,” live at 12:00 EST on YouTube.
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Kaeck Unleashes “Het vurig gemaal” on YouTube
Interview with Jan Kruitwagen of Kaeck (2021)
Already gaining a lead on all other contenders for the most compelling underground metal album of the year, Kaeck has on Het Zwarte Dictaat made the masterpiece of violent rhythm riffs and melodies that much of the underground wishes it could, combining black metal and war metal with doom metal and death metal to create a constantly changing mood within a fluid style. Fortunately, guitarist/composer Jan Kruitwagen had a few moments to give us his take on the band and state of the metal genre.
2 CommentsTags: Black Metal, jan kruitwagen, kaeck, War Metal
Kaeck – Het Zwarte Dictaat (2021)
Easily a candidate for album of the year, Het Zwarte Dictaat from Kaeck makes a form of war metal that incorporates the subtle melodies of black metal and the longer atmospheric riffs of later death metal, melding a primitive assault along the lines of Zyklon-B and Blasphemy with the type of elaborate construction we might expect from Emperor or Demigod.
With use of precise riffs, this album creates atmosphere in the classic underground metal style that contrasts loping hypnotic riffs with bursts of fury, allowing the song to emerge from a smoldering inner conflict like a car shooting out of a darkened tunnel into the light, looking for clarity within a shifting landscape of ambiguity and violence.
In its blend of war metal, doom-death, and black metal, Kaeck runs the gamut of tempi and rhythms over the course of this album, transitioning from the primitive to the almost reverentially mood-driven. By blending current methods with the most ancient of metal traditions, Het Zwarte Dictaat keeps a foot in the past while stepping into the future.
2 CommentsCondemner Posts Rehearsal Track of “Male Patratis Sunt Atra Theatra Parata”
Texas post-death metal band Condemner — which seems to combine Celtic Frost, Incantation, and Blasphemy in its sound — posted its latest rehearsal track yesterday, showcasing its desire to stack primitive chromatic riffs against rumbling discursion in order to make wandering, melancholic tracks with an undertone of violent Nietzschean-Galtonian “might is right” conflict.
5 CommentsDeath Reich – Death Camp (2021)
As war metal matures, it becomes more like the grindcore that inspired it, basically fast-paced chromatic rhythm riffing that expands into melodic conclusions, following that bands as varied as Terrorizer, Trench Warfare, and Death Siege have been doing in recent years.
No CommentsTags: death reich, War Metal
Kaeck Releases Teaser for New Album Het Zwarte Dictaat
Monstrous Dutch war metal with tinges of traditional black metal band Kaeck have announced their new album, Het Zwarte Dictaat (The Black Command) and released a teaser showing off a couple riffs for you to try to play during the seventh lockdown.
11 CommentsPerdition Temple – Edict of the Antichrist Elect (2020)
War metal like old intensely rhythmic death metal lives within the chromatic scale and only offsets that with bookends of broad leaps in riff, often whole tone scale with a melodic leap in the middle, to interrupt the codex of texture it unleashes to maintain a mood of energy and penetrating beneath surface appearance.
6 CommentsTags: perdition temple, War Metal
Trenchant – Martial Chaos (2018)
Something like war metal happens to your genre when the innovators create a framework and then the herd rushes in to make its own versions of the new music, coincidentally making it sound like everything else since that is the music that panders to herd tastes. “Post-metal” is basically emo, and war metal is the counter-revolution.
5 CommentsNekus – Death Nova Upon The Barren Harvest (2020)
Good things in life usually arrive in messy form. The bad things are simple and seem harmless; the good ones tend to be ambiguous, and only reveal their value over time, where you can see plusses and minuses to their operation but good results in the end. Such is also true of much of underground metal.
1 CommentTags: Black Metal, nekus, War Metal
