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In a philosophic way – and hey, I am not trying to set up any discussion about it – but mankind’s ‘inner self’ is always like a travel into one’s identity, a quest to discover your own raison d’être, a confrontation with monstrous entities, nothing else but caused by your own thoughts, ideas, beliefs, opinions, and so on. Are there any supernatural powers – gods or deities, if you want – to enlighten the path we’re crawling on to reach the end? Is our inner self, being a ‘dungeon’, able to trespass the limitations, to cross the borders of our personal expectations and conversances?

[last year I came in touch with Jakub from Voidfire, yet due to circumstances, I did not have the time yet to write a review on the sole full-length album by his band Voidfire; with some delay, but here are my thoughts on that debut…]

It was purely coincidentally that I came in touch with some friendly guy called André and a new project he started, called Landstrykar. …doesn’t matter how we ‘met’, but I was truly intrigued by what I heard. I’ll start with a small introduction.

Well, you know, I do not mind -not ever- to listen to stuff that lacks of originality. I just have a few conditions: please do not act like a cheap copycat, please respect the scene (which does not mean that you cannot reinterpret narrow-minded borders, of course), and please convince me.

And that’s exactly what this German act does: playing uncompromising, no-nonsense Death / Thrash material in the vein of ‘the old school’ (whatever this might mean this time), yet without becoming some cheap ‘tribute’ band whatever.

After the passing away of Moscow-based Goth-outfit Fright Night, Marianna Lukianova and Marina Scherba, both of them also involved with e.g. Mea Vita or Vechnost’ Nebytiya, decided to go on under the Vesssna moniker. That name is some word-play for the Russian word for ‘Spring’ (‘vesna’, which used to be a nickname for Marianna apparently).

Verwilderd (meaning something like ‘haggard’ or ‘gone / grown wild’) is a young Flemish band, formed in 2020 by producer / bass player Bram Janssens, vocalist / guitarist Brent Peeters (whom you might know from his involvement with e.g. Dark Palace) and drummer Siebe Hermans (think: Eye Of Solitude, Defenestration, When Plagues Collide, Mourners etc.).

There are several bands called ‘baalberith’, named after a demongod, an entity also known as Ba’al Berith and closely related to El Berith (sort of spiritual ‘twins’). I am not going to write down an essay on this grand duke; I guess the internet, and the Old Testament, might satisfy your quest for knowledge.

Warning: there is a huge dose of feminism going on when talking about the French project Lůn, but it has to do with the female force as a vital part of Mater Terra’s evolution, as goddesses of Human Life, rather than with some anti-male statement. Phew…

Once in a while – and that is exactly why I do like being a reviewer – you just get overwhelmed by something completely stunning. It does not have to be something new / renewing, you know, but something that just grabs you by your b***s, eh, something that draws attention.

All the Indians in the Amazon are doing it right now. They refuse to bring any babies into the world. They kill every child that comes into the world, because they don’t want to live in this kind of a world. So be patient, be patient… death is… I tell you – I don’t care how many screams you hear, I don’t care how many anguished cries… Death is a million times preferable to ten more days of this life.