When you think of the impetus behind Sammath and Kaeck, think of cooking: a careful adjustment of the ratio and granularity of ingredients in order to achieve the perfect effect. Trying to meld aggressive death metal and sinister black metal requires precise intent, like martial arts or assembling nukes.

Early Sammath bounced between the elegant atmosphere of Strijd and the raw unbridled intensity of Verwoesting Devastation, but Kaeck adds the influence of primitive death metal like Infester or Sinister and doom metal atmospheres, and the synthesis gels on this album.

Gruwelijk Onthaal features the elements of primitive death metal riffing re-arranged into subtlety and set into song structures that are like short folktales of conflict, each bending raw sound into a story that drops from bursting energy to enduring atmosphere.

With this knitting together of the threads of underground metal, a short album like this can tell many tales, and through the emergence of themes buried inside its churning assault, reveal the world of natural aggression buried beneath the heaps of delusional human feelings that bewitch ordinary life.

Tags: Black Metal, death metal, kaeck