Sammath – Grebbeberg (2023)

Sammath has always had two bands inside: one that writes subtle melodic music, and another that wants full-on pounding rhythmic warfare like early death metal. On Grebbeberg, Sammath unites its Gemini-like two halves with the aggression of Dodengang mixed into the melody of recent works.

Much as on Godless Arrogance, faint oddball melodies in a straightforward old world style emerge from the pummeling riffs and sawing vertiginous contrasts, avoiding the use of melody as a cudgel like most bands do and instead using it to advance the structure of each song.

This may be the furthest the band has ventured from rock and heavy metal on the whole, since songs spin up from chromatic pure violence into a wider tonal leaps from which small melodies appear that foreshadow riff change and the thematic conclusion to each song.

On the drier side of technique, the band make great use of martial percussion and the war metal trope of shorter riffs expanding into longer fretruns, but then inject into this the same elegance that marked Strijd to give the album a reverential and ethereal quality amidst the raging chaos.

You can pre-order Grebbeberg at this link.

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33 thoughts on “Sammath – Grebbeberg (2023)”

  1. Pauline says:

    Yawn. How long this band will live off the hype of Godless? Review Warkvlt’s Burzum tribute Burzumination it came out 11 feb 2023 for Varg’s 50 birthday lol.

    1. The first album deserves more focus as well, but none of their material has been crap.

      1. You typed this on a iPhone, opinion ignored since you are obviously a hipster.

        1. I have never, nor will I ever, use an iPhone or another Apple product unless there is no other option.

      2. Cynical says:

        Verwoestung/Devestation was pretty terrible by any standard.

    2. Warkvlt? Internet trend band. Most metal fans are such tiny peenor soythugs at this point that they call for an orderly if they encounter actual aggressive, warlike metal that makes you stop thinking like a modern debt slave video sheep for long enough to notice you are alive.

  2. True metal never dies... it just goes to a retirement home says:

    Their first album was too much Emperor, then they did some boring Niden Div 187 meets Angelcorpse stuff, now they are back to trying to be early Morbid Angel with the melody of Sinister, and it works for me at least. Finally a new LP with some fucking balls and yes youd better listen to this on vinyl or you are a false who has sex with manatees.

    1. Trying to have sex with a creature in water is bound to lead to chafing.

  3. True metal never dies... it just goes to a retirement home says:

    Hahah, Reddit is down, the elder gods are angry with the couch potatoes. Maybe this album awakened their warspirit and made them want to slaughter all of the unworthy humans which is like most of the species.

    1. Unfortunately it is back up. The soybodies and wineaunts have their citadel back.

    2. I just had my eleventh birthday says:

      I’m late to the party and still social media ignorant: what’s bad about Reddit?

      1. It is headquarters for the soy contingent: a little bit of libertarianism, a little bit of communism, plenty of self-pity, feminism but with a rapey edge, creepy obsessions with artifacts of missed childhoods, obsession with inverted activities like pegging and dogmatic atheism, excess of sentiment and inability to socialize translated into excessive deference, and other creepy artifacts of the deconstruction of the human mind through excessive masturbation.

        1. I just had my eleventh birthday says:

          Sounds like an average slice of the internet, where even very low-quality people have a say and eventually drown out the good stuff with subcultures. Still, I’ve found some pretty useful things on Reddit so far. Maybe I’ve visited all the wrong (right) subreddits.

          1. It is above average in this regard. Something about Reddit attracts low self-confidence people, perhaps the lack of personality to it. People who cannot compete for attention on Instagram and Twitter seem to hang out at Reddit, and gives it the odor of basement and stale unhealthy semen.

            1. I just had my eleventh birthday says:

              You’re right, I should’ve picked Instagram.

              1. Get on Masodong, now with 500% more racism and anime.

                1. I just had my eleventh birthday says:

                  There are too few words to express my hatred of anime/manga. What did we do to deserve this thing? There are bad, trashy things in this world, but anime is so elaborately bad I’m about to believe in supernatural evil. Look at those faces. They actually look like insects with Down syndrome. Why are insects with fucking Down syndrome the most popular thing with people aged 3 to 60? Thousands of animators, overworking and underpaid, spending 18 hours a day ruining their carpal tunnels to draw retarded fruit flies. What the hell is even that?

                  1. Is supernatural evil anything more than human mental disorganization projected out into the wider space of ideas? Life tends to teach that we do not need Satan, Lucifer, Krampus, Sutekh, Sheitan, or Beherit… the evil is not having an ordered mind. Anime is just a symptom of that. Would Satan bother to create such a neurotic exploration of nostalgia for a place that never existed called a lost childhood? Anime has always been the playground of daydreamer shut-in nerd boys in Japan who hide out from the world until they must give their souls to the sixteen hours a day of corporate work they do before dropping dead of heart attacks in their sixties.

                    1. I just had my eleventh birthday says:

                      No, I think anime is an evil beyond the mind. An evil that transcends any and all phenomena, symptoms and effects. Anime is very likely the root cause of the disturbance that created the universe, and now, finally, its head pokes out the other end, revealing the horrid truth.

                      Also, of course we need Beherit! Are you out of your knickerbockers, man?

                    2. I must take the liberal view here and argue that it is merely an effect. Drop nukes on people, send them off to sarariman culture, and you get basement-dwellers (no offense intended) who channel a metaphorical essence of “evil,” which seems to simply mean human illusion and disordered thinking.

                      Beherit the ancient god, not the band. We need that Beherit. EVERY DAY!

                    3. Evil is good and good is Evil says:

                      Salarymens just took murkan corporate culture to its logical extreme and added its own oriental twist to it.

                    4. I agree. Like a parody, but people have to live that way.

                    5. Cynical says:

                      ” Life tends to teach that we do not need […] Beherit…”

                      Speaking for myself, my life would be less interesting without “Drawing Down the Moon”, “Electric Doom Synthesis”, and “Engram”.

                  2. Sailor Trey-Trey & The Morbid Angels says:

                    Like with all vices, anime should be kept a secret just like bugchasing hobbies, equine dildo collections and scat fetishism. You don’t want to ruin the surprise.

                    1. Diapers are Christmas wrapping paper for weirdos.

            2. Dweller of the basements says:

              Isn’t that what forums/message boards were before the complete takeover of narcissists by social media, just more centralized?

              1. Good question, but as a non-egalitarian I can only say, “some of them.” There were some creepshow forums no doubt. It was harder however to draw attention to oneself like it is on social media, and since the audience was localized, there was less of a behavior system where a few influencers get tens of millions of dollars and everyone else slaves away at OnlyFans and YouTube for relative pennies.

                1. Masculine Clitoris says:

                  Yeah true, but now let me tell you about my vagina.

                  1. Do an interpretive dance?

                    1. Interpretive dances for high concepts and drum circles are two things I do not miss about the 1990s.

  4. Flying Kites says:

    Ideas end with the death of the mind. Spirit has total freedom of choice in death.

    Which side do you take?

  5. I just had my eleventh birthday says:

    All joking aside, I agree with you. And Beherit are fantastic. EDS sounds like the sharp mind of a demon general considering strategies before a battle.

    1. Also one of the greatest driving albums ever created, if you have open road near you.

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