Review Summary: Mom metal?
Much like 2019 debut
De Val, Verwoed’s sophomore LP
The Mother stands apart from the prototypical sound for a Dutch black metal band. Stylistically, the one-man project instead calls to mind the bitter coldness associated with Icelandic groups (like Zhrine or Misthyrming) or the sinister grandiosity of a collective like Deathspell Omega. There hasn’t been a notable sonic shift in the five years between full-lengths, but as a second effort,
The Mother feels like a noteworthy improvement upon the already worthy first attempt. The album’s seven songs are largely slow-paced and lean on an oppressive sort of heaviness, but its biggest strength is in the atmosphere. I don’t mean atmosphere in the commonly understood sense of “atmospheric black metal”, but more broadly. The arcane malevolence this music revels in is reminiscent of last year’s Thantifaxath record, the kind of sound which can be quite awesome (as in the case of the referenced album), but also runs the risk of being reduced to an evil-sounding caricature.
The Mother is quite impressive, therefore, in its ability to integrate a fairly wide emotional palette into its cauldron of grinding malevolence. Indeed, some of the most compelling moments here are on the less “extreme” side, like the extended heavy metal-esque guitar solo during the second half of “The Madman’s Dance” or the gorgeous acoustic passage from “Death in a Rosary” which closes out the album, and these occurrences fit comfortably into the back-and-forth dynamic which defines its lengthier tracks. For its style,
The Mother is a fairly brief release, but the balance of vibe-boosting interludes (shoutout to the ritualistic “A Prayer of Blood and Fire”) and sprawling metal odes is absolutely on point, and the execution is tasteful throughout. Crack this one up as yet another win for the ever under-appreciated Dutch scene, even if Verwoed continue to chart their own path.
