ALBUM REVIEW: De Doden Hebben Het Goed III – Wiegedood
Belgium’s WIEGEDOOD have quickly marked themselves out as one of the most impressive and musically inventive black metal acts on the planet, despite having been around for a mere four years, on the merit of two amazing records and a truly tight and ferocious stage presence at their live shows. Coupling the harsh and discordant sound of black metal with a grandiose and subtly sublime atmospherics, they’ve managed to swiftly carve out their own niche and a great, unmistakable sound within the black metal underground. With their latest full length De Doden Hobben Het Goed III, the third and final offering of their De Doden Hebben Het Goed trilogy, the band takes a much darker turn with their music, creating an album that is undeniably intense, bleak and palpably dark.
The album’s opener, Prowl, begins with a roar, and proves to be one of WIEGEDOOD‘s darkest and most ferocious tracks to date, with dense, down-picked guitar hooks, and shrill, bestial vocals creating an oppressive and aggressive sound right out of the gate. It has an incredibly fierce and claustrophobic sound, with a production cut from an old school black metal cloth, and cloaked in a murky and bleak atmosphere. This is an incredibly strong opening gambit, and barely lets up with its speed and intensity throughout, setting a grim and vicious tone for the other three tracks to measure up to.
Doodskalm takes up this thread, with dissonant, jarring guitar leads, blisteringly fast drums and equally caustic vocal arrangements. The whole song possesses a bleak and funereal ambience, which makes the music all the more dark and delightfully disturbing. As the song enters its second half, the musical quickly shifts towards much more ethereal, clean passages, that help to break up this track and showcase the atmospherics WIEGEDOOD are famed for, without losing any of the venom and bile that characterises the majority of the track. Everything about this song, from its sound to the extremely high musicianship and diverse musical compositions, is mightily impressive, and it raises the musical bar to even greater heights.
The penultimate, titular track, stands as not only the album’s longest track, but also its best. This monolithic, twelve minute masterpiece doesn’t immediately go for the jugular, but opts for much softer, sublime tones, with an notably eerie tone, to prime the listener for what’s to come. This initial riff does, inevitably, become a much more robust and ferocious one, slowly adding other musical motifs to the mix, with some brilliant, sparse vocal deliveries being one of the highlights. Compared to the two songs that preceded it, this is a much more mid paced affair, but this doesn’t take away from the intensity or power of the song, and allows for more subtle, ambient elements to be given room to be heard and appreciated. It’s also a much more minimalist offering, but this creates an undeniably hypnotic and engrossing experience rather than straying into the realms of repetitiveness, and there are still enough stylistic shifts in the guitar hooks, drumming and vocals to keep the song fresh and interesting from start to finish.
As the songs climactic moments approach, the overall performance and style of the music takes on a much more frenzied and cacophonous bent, which helps to bring it to a close on an all too familiar, and primal, note. The fourth and final piece of music on offer, Parool, is by far and away the fastest and most primal track on the whole record, with chaotic riffs, frenetic drumming and arid, bloodcurdling shrieks making for an unrelentingly dark, dense and overpowering sound that assaults the listener from its very first note, providing one last, unforgettably brutal performance before the album draws to a close.
This is yet another excellent record from an equally exemplary band. Straying from their tried and tested formula to a degree, without losing any of the key facets and stylistic approaches that have helped them garner a solid cult following, WIEGEDOOD have managed to craft an intensely dark and unflinchingly powerful album that does a stellar job of capping off this lauded and critically acclaimed trilogy of albums in the best possible way. You would be hard pressed to find a band that have managed to establish their own sound so definitively with their first three records, but this band have accomplished this with ease, with each album, and this one in particular, being amazing on all fronts, from musicianship to production. It’s with eager anticipation that the listener waits to see how they will follow this up.
Rating: 9/10
De Doden Hobben Het Goed III is out now via Century Media Records.
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