Nosebreaker. On the cover is a picture of a French Bulldog. Those don’t have a nose.

That aside, Nosebreaker is the debut EP of a Belgian, Brussels-based psychedelic Rock outfit called Coubiac. Or as they put it themselves, ”Heavy Chaos Rock”. The band is four dudes, P, F, S and HP, responsible for drums, guitars, vocals and bass respectively. I know no more. Let me briefly shine my light on Nosebreaker.

I’ll be back with some Metal later today, but before that I just wanted to throw this out there for those of you that haven’t seen it yet. It’s 100% brilliant.

When I first saw the title of this album I was kind of confused. Never, ever did I see an alternative rock/metal outfit sing about gore. Because yeah, grinding organs is not something one does daily, doesn’t one? However, after hearing the lyrics to the title song, I was reassured, and images of meat pies filled with human body parts were left to the bin.

First of all, I’m very impressed by the graphical concept and design these guys display on their website and album. Congratulations guys, this is top notch.

Looking at the title of their latest effort, Gorath are not mincing their words. Black Metal in the purest form from the heart of the EU, once thought to be the realm of the anti-Christ.

As I am familiar with the world of Christian Metal, I found this album especially interesting since it delivers and alternative look on the apocalypse, something other secular bands tend to either avoid or pervert. With songs such as Le Porteur de Lumière and Beasts From the Earth and the Sea they seem to take on a fairly accurate view on the Book of Revelations. They only change perspective on those stories and believe that God is the initiator of all bad things and they find the Millennial Kingdom to be a thousand years of darkness. Being a relativist I don’t blame them for their originality.

Don’t you think that name sounds strangely familiar? Like it’s a world famous, world-class Black Metal band everyone’s heard of? Well, perhaps they are, as they’ve been around for about fifteen years now and are currently signed to Twilight Vertrieb, not the smallest in Extreme Metal labels, but I can’t find any reference of it. No Wiki page, no articles in the major Metal blogs, no nothing.

Any idea why this band has got the Inca Seal of Approval on their album cover? It’s because the music on the EP is “strongly influenced by Mesoamerican mythology”. That said, the EP title should make sense to you as well now. This is some fuckin’ blood-drinking, flesh-feasting Death Metal. Death Metal with a taste for raw meat. The purist wouldn’t want it any other way.

I received the five-song EP in my mail the other day, including a two-page press release. Specifically aimed at ‘zines and sites like ours, it states “this mini-CD will blow your brains out. If it doesn’t, then Atreus will come to your office and do so”. You’ll understand then, that we will waste not a single negative word on TFoHS in this review, be it for one reason or the other!

You probably will have noticed we don’t limit ourselves to reviewing stuff that is new, as fresh as a virgin’s arse after her Sunday morning bathing session. It’s absolutely impossible to keep track of all the Metal that is released over time, and so it is only logical that we miss out on the release of oceans full of high quality material. As a result, we more than regularly discover superb new – for us – stuff, by bands we didn’t know yet, that are already “old”. That’s to say, not crispy fuckin’ new.

Herfst, or H e r f s † as they tend to write it themselves, is from Belgium, and their name simply means Autumn in Dutch. Their release Necrotica is exactly such an album that we missed when it first came to the market, but to which our attention was pointed at a later moment.

We got into contact with Bram van Cauter, lead guitarist since the band’s formation in 1999, and he told us “H e r f s † functions in a dim, moist, grim and frostbitten subterranean realm of Black/Dark/Death Metal”. He also called The Baboon a “funky monkey”. It doesn’t take much more to get our attention.

Your 2010 Christmas presents included an awesome Symphonic Black Metal piece by the Belgian group Saille. I praised it for its care and eye for detail and its high level of professionalism. The song in questions, Maere, is just one of many found on the band’s debut record, titled Irreversible Decay, which is scheduled for release in a couple of months – on March 4^th to be exact.

Lucky prick that I am, I’ve already got my hands on it through the band’s label Code666 and I’ll be discussing it now, in full fuckin’ detail. Code666 states: “fans of Keep of Kalessin, Carach Angren and Tartaros will love this blend of majestic and threatening Black Metal”. I can only agree, so if you are indeed a fan of those bands, all the more reason to read on.

You’ve already had one Metal present today, some “Classical Metal” by Apocalyptica. We’d like to stick to classical atmospheres for today, but we will add guitars and bass to the show as well. Saille, hailing from the Belgian city of Ghent, produces a piece of Symphonic Black Metal that is absolutely top notch, in every aspect of music production.

In the words of the band, Saille is “a musical project of several musicians with a love for Black Metal and melancholy. Exploring the beauty of destruction.” Initially started in 2008 as a studio project, by Dries Gaerdelen and with the help of musicians from other Belgian Metal groups, the band eventually shaped into the full-fledged six-headed thing it is today.

If you’re not a fan of Black Metal by definition, I still urge you to check this out, as this is something completely unlike the scrawny production with synthetic classical instruments, that many bands in the genre revel in, that you might expect to find. I mentioned to Dries that their music reminded me of Carach Angren. Turns out that they are actually one of Saille’s benchmarks in terms of finishing and professionalism. So, if you’ve ever heard anything from Carach Angren, you know why you need to continue reading!