ALBUM REVIEW: Weemoedsklanken – Meslamtaea

Dutch avant-garde black metallers MESLAMTAEA have released their fourth studio album Weemoedsklanken. Formed In 1998 by prolific multi-instrumentalist Floris, previously of such names as ASGRAUW, SCHAVOT, SAGENLAND and ANNWFYN, Weemoedsklanken (meaning “Sounds of Melancholy”, in their native tongue) is the latest in the band’s trifecta of modern works, having released 2019’s Niets & Niemendal and 2020’s Geketend In De Schaduw Van Het Leven following over 20 years of hiatus.

Weemoedsklanken will strike a chord before it has even begun playing due to the fact it is wrapped in striking cover art featuring intricate linework building up a post-apocalyptic scene. It is rare for cover art in modern times to garner even a second look, but the listener may well find themselves poring over the details of this piece as the album unfolds its tenebrous wings. The album itself opens with Weemoed, a bleak and melancholic introductory piece which seems to take its cues from the worlds of dungeon synth and morose classical works before a pick scrape introduces the main riff, which drags like depressed feet over endless paving slabs. It’s overwhelmingly miserable and is tremendously effective at setting the mood before Rad des Tijds steps the tempo up into a judder of blast beats. As black metal goes it’s fairly standard, with passable grating segments and suitably dank and miserable atmosphere, but there is the questionable inclusion of the flugelhorn (provided by Izzy, formerly of DETOUR DOOM ENSEMBLE and L’AMARA) to contend with, which seems to hang about awkwardly in the background, adding strange, distracting disharmony to the whole ensemble.

As Weemoedsklanken trundles on, it becomes sharply apparent that this is very much an album of two halves. On their more straightforward material, MESLAMTAEA spit fire. Throughout the album’s middle segment there are moments such as Grauwe Muren, which is packed to the rafters with swelteringly discordant riffs and has frontman Ward sounding like he may well burst a vein. The same can be said for the utterly furious gallop of Schone Lei, which features a vibrant and refrained cylinder of extremely melodic tremolo and stout double-kick, with some flashes of clean guitar lines excellently paired with creative cymbal work. It makes for a very impressive, satisfying little parcel and it’s rounded off with a closing riff that has some serious bite to it.

However, when we turn to their more experimental material, it often appears to be a case of total hit-and-miss. For example, Moegestreden is some kind of film-noir blackened jazz nightmare. It’s a labyrinth of strange, bass-heavy proggy riffs and thunderous blast beat runs, overlaid with the jarring and thoroughly odd tones of the flugelhorn. Basically, this track sounds as though FRANK ZAPPA had been born in Norway in the late 70s and later run into the guys from ULVER and agreed to form a band with them.

Within Weemoedsklanken’s closing moments, MESLAMTAEA seem to double down on this approach, such as with Verstoten, which can only be described as a true slog. A dirge-like procession of all the weirdest ideas that have been present so far. The back half in particular seems to pop into some kind of dark jazz, sounding like Satan’s lounge band on freeform night overlaid with some of the creepiest ASMR you’ve ever heard, before finishing on a tight and fast segment of battering drumlines and machine-gun tremolo. Finally, we come to Uiteengevallen, which at times sounds like RAVI SHANKAR doing a collaboration with whoever played sax on the Dark Side Of The Moon. There is then a pretty cacophonous riff complete with odd time signatures and that wailing flugelhorn over the top marking the album’s end.

Weemoedsklanken is nothing short of ambitious. It feels like an attempt at reinvention. To take the hallmarks of the black metal genre and mould them into something new while simultaneously adding wholly new and never before experienced shades of darkness into the mix. Unfortunately though, something about it just seems off. At times it feels like sharp and clever assault, but at others a scatterbrained disaster, a befouled charcoal smudge of various different influences and musical ideas all flash-boiled together into one overwhelming, confusing and bizarre mess. If you like your black metal just about as avant-garde as it comes, jump right in, you’ll probably love it. To the rest of us who hold but simple minds in our heads, this one may be best left to lie, cool cover art or no cool cover art.

Rating: 5/10

Weemoedsklanken is out now via Babylon Doom Cult Records.

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