Sidestepping their Brutal Death Metal roots, Dutch quintet Toxocara have embraced a slightly different angle on their third album AtmosFear. Understandable, given the significant line-up change they underwent, but at least there are some remnants of the older style, now mixed in with some industrial and Tech-Death touches. Their main aims seem to be intensity and speed, both of which they achieve with much aplomb, and display a maturity that can only be gained from each of the members having his own respective bands on the side.

Ignoring the frankly strange title-track intro of children singing, the first proper track Black Widow kicks off nicely with a blazing fury of Technical Death Metal, powered by human drum-machine William Vlierman, who dominates much of the album. An echo of The Monolith Deathcult is present (logically given they share Martijn Moes as guitarist), but they also incorporate elements of Obscura in the solos from Moes and Vince Zwarts, and some tasteful melodic lines.

It’s been a while since I wrote something, but this is mainly due since we had Christmas, I had to work, we had guests over etc. A bloody busy Christmas it was for me. So just to relax, I’ll kickstart my writing with some good old Melodic Death Metal. Although this genre seemed to have somewhat bled to death for me, there are still some gems left alive, which seem to catch my attention from time to time.

One of them is Burial Earth, who are a Netherlandish band (officially abandoning the word Dutch, because it’s stupid), which arose from the ashes of Docile in 2009. In 2010 they released their first demo simply called Demo 2010.

Despite – or perhaps because – I had a 20 hour working day yesterday / this morning, I had plenty of time to listen to music. Just didn’t have any fuckin’ time to write about it, as I was wrestling 1.4 million line Excel docs and PowerPoint files with way too much fuckin’ bullcrap. That wasn’t particularly fun, but one of the main things that kept me going until 4:30 a.m. was fellow Dutch national Christian Olde Wolbers, with his both chugging and catchy jamming which I’d like to share today.

If his name strikes you as familiar, that’s perhaps because he’s been a long but no longer standing member of American Industrial Metal formation Fear Factory, on both bass and guitar duties. On top of that he has worked with Mnemic, Threat Signal, Devin Townsend, God Forbid and many more. Currently he’s involved in Arkaea and Beowülf and he’s the CEO of his own company in goalkeeper’s gloves, Aviata Sports. Summarizing, you could say he’s a busy man.

[Important note: If you think you're having a deja-vu, you're right. We already published this before. However, Joris has agreed to answer an additional batch of questions, following on his earlier answers. We've just updated the interview with this additional content, in which we talked about Batavi, the band's upcoming album. So, if you've already read it, read it again! And yes, what Joris says about trains going to 'the Achterhoek' is true. As a native 'Achterhoeker' I know this from experience.]

You may remember from a while ago that we discussed Heidevolk, a Folk Metal band from my homeland. Specifically we introduced you to the song Nehalennia, found on Uit Oude Grond, the band’s March 2010 released album and their latest to date.

Smart fucker that I am it gave me the idea to contact the band and shoot them some questions. One of two vocalists, Joris Boghtdrincker (Joris “Drinker of Plunk”) replied with some mighty elaborate and interesting answers. We spoke about their roots and motivation, why they sing in Dutch and as a thick juicy cherry on top Joris mentioned the recording stage of their upcoming record, Batavi, is coming to a close.

Admittedly I took this news from NCS (bottom of the post). Shame on me, as a Dutchman and as someone originally from Gelderland, where the Saxons rule, drink beer and rape your women. I should have my skull split by a huge fuckin’ axe, I know.

Folk / Pagan outfit Heidevolk – meaning Heath Folk or Heath People – sings about the history of Gelderland, the region that’s now one of the twelve Dutch provinces, and which was full of tough motherfuckers in (pre-)medieval times. Their stuff is covered with a sauce of ancient Germanic mythology and serves it up in a superbly heroic fashion. The “news” is that they have an album out since we last dealt with with at The Baboon. It’s called Uit Oude Grond (From Old Soil) and came out in March of 2010… Someone bash me with a warhammer please.

Anyfuck, they did a music video for the album’s opening song and that’s what we found at NCS and would like to pass on after the jump.

Is it because they keep falling out of trees?

A different Ray from your earlier post sent us a suggestion two weeks ago, for a band from my home country that I have actually never heard of. They’re called that which is in the post title, they hail from the northern province of Friesland and they play a depressed doomy experimental piece of Black Metal. If you’re looking at a busy day, this might not be the best to start it with. Buuuut, we’ve got that covered.

I quote: “Grindbashers decided to clean up their closet and the skeletons are presented on this CD”. In turn, the CD got sent to me by Herrie, which means as much as ‘Noise’, the perpetrator behind Herrie Records Inc., who is also responsible for Grindbashers’ bass and “mouth & throat” efforts.

However, it’s not just the skeletons of Grindbashers’ murdered family that you hear on this record. Also Tersanjung13, a genre member from Indonesia, brought a bunch of stiffs to the party. The combined result is 28 minutes and 24 songs of rattling clanging Grindcore traversing the air quicker than a chili fart on a breezy summer evening. But when your nose does get wind of them, they’re violent as fuck. Generally I like such farts only when I popped ‘em myself, but fuck it. Let’s just review anyway!

Nearly a year ago we had an interview with Fredde Kaddeth, guitarist and producer of the Dutch old-school Death Metal outfit Massive Assault, focused a lot on guitar technicalities, the band’s inspiration and being an Extreme Metal band in the Netherlands.

Not long after, we also reviewed the band’s 2009 album Dystopian Prophecies. That did a lot of good in our ears and therefore we are pleased to review the band’s recent release, the Slayer EP!

Anyone ordered a pallet load of Groooove? No? Well, I’ve got a full fuckin’ load right here, in the form of SeeS (UK), Noceceptor (US) and CiLiCe (Netherlands), and I’m not taking it back. These three bands all play a type of mathematically inspired Progressive Metal with basement-deep tuned guitars, a.k.a. Djent. Complex rhythms and loads of Groooove are the key here. Truth be told: the untrained listener may mainly hear chaos, but when you manage to rise above that – and when is that not needed when listening to Extreme Metal? – the Groove appears.

If you’re a regular visitor you may remember the rather extensive report in two parts of a Metal-rich evening I experienced in Amsterdan in early December. One of the bands I saw that night was Chapter7, a Dutch Hard Rock band pretty much balancing on the brink of crossing over to Metal. Their performance was among the strongest of the evening, with the energy nearly literally tearing my ear shells off.

I bought their 4-song EP that night, for the incredible amount of €2.-. For those of you who don’t use Euromoney regularly, that’s about the price of a beer. Couldn’t leave that behind, and I still drank that beer anyway! Subsequently I reviewed the disc here.

And today the story continues. The band dropped me a message on My-fuckin’-Space the other day, with a link to their new song Crash, complete with vid. So I hurried my digital ass to YouTube and sacrificed another year of good hearing to the song. Me fuckin’ likes!