#Oerheks 🇧🇪 Landschapsanachronismen

Band: Oerheks
Title: Landschapsanachronismen
Label: Amor Fati Productions / Babylon Doom Cult Records
Release date: 22 February 2023
Country: Belgium
Format reviewed: High-quality Digital Recording

I think that Atmospheric Black Metal is a highly emotional (sub)genre, at least it can convey so many things to me when I’m listening: from great despair and desolation to chills down my spine, sorrow, melancholy, mournful thoughts… It connects with my inner “me” and every time I listen carefully to an album of this kind, it’s like having a storm inside. Nothing bad about it, on the contrary: it’s a soothing storm, and I can end up feeling a bit stronger than before.

As you guessed, Oerheks is an Atmospheric Black Metal band; it’s a one man band, and Hans Cools is THE man. He is from Belgium and he is in some other bands: Silver Knife, Hypothermia, Monads… In Oerheks, he is in charge of everything, and this gives him total freedom about songwriting, use of vocals, instruments… This 2 track demo has a lot of elements to enjoy this genre, if you allow yourself to drown in the music and the atmosphere.

First track, “Een eenzaat in het landschap” is composed by raw melodies that flow through your ears repeatedly, coming in waves of frozen despair; the sensation is like being surrounded by gloomy fog, and well, you entered it but you’ll never quit. The tremolo picking sounds raw, obscure, like a multi-layered sonic sphere that swallows everything, even light. Drums are playing repetitive patterns, from mid-tempo to fast and explosive, and meanwhile vocals are in the background, audible enough but not too much, caught in the instrumental storm. Some agonic screams from time to time bring you back to reality, if you were lost in melancholic digression. The break in the middle of this track allows you to reach to a safe shore, but in fact you are waiting, no, you are craving for what comes next: a brutal scream and the return of an even more bleak instrumental attack.

The second track, “Een oude wijsheid werd hier geveld” is another hypnotic journey, starting with a savage scream cradled by mid-tempo drums and tremolo guitar that brings nothing but daze and dismal thoughts to the listener. Melancholic melodies intertwine with each other creating a gigantic black hole made of dissonant icy harmonies. Drums speed up their rhythm and guitar melodies keep on entwining with anguish screamed vocals.

Maybe the fact that each track is more than 12 minutes running makes the overall sound a bit repetitive. But this demo has a great atmosphere and I’ll have my ears ready for any upcoming release by Oerheks. Let’s see what the future can bring to this one man project… For me it’s 7,5/10 Sílvia

At this moment no stream is available for the released reviewed.

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Amor Fati Productions (for the LP)
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Babylon Doom Cult Records (For the cassette)
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7,5/10 Victory is possible
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