Band:	Terzij De Horde
Album:	A Rage Of Rapture Against The Dying Of The Light
Style:	Black metal, Post-metal
Release date:	2010

01. Prometheans
02. Vertigo: The Mithraic Ritual
03. The Roots Of Doomsday Anxiety
04. Non Timetis Messor

The music within is awful. An infernal racket of screeched vocals and underproduced instruments that seem intended to be a grating experience for the listener.

Then again, this is a quasi-black project and all of those above statements which could easily be taken as negatives are, in fact, positives.

Terzij De Horde are a Dutch five piece that were formerly roaming the low country, assaulting people at random as Liar Liar Cross On Fire. The band is, apparently, "post-Black", which seems to be largely black metal with some doom and perhaps even traces of screaming hardcore influence. And who knows what else? "The Roots Of Doomsday Anxiety", one of tracks on this four song EP, A Rage Of Rapture Against The Dying Of The Light was previously found on a LLCOF demo. This time it is slightly beefed up, and closes out with what is likely some Euro folk instrument I've never heard of but sounds suspiciously like a banjo. ("Did you just get bluegrass in my screaming post-black?")

The band basically weave between two speeds:

First gear, slow, in which they tend to let dissonant chords ring sickly out or engage in single note melodies designed for maximum tension while the bass occasionally rumbles along a little foray of it's own.

Forget 2nd through 5th gears as they just skip to an overdrive gear in which the band blast away with pounding drums and tremolo riffing. One of their special tricks is while cruising away the guitarist slides dissonant chords further up the guitar neck, which creates an almost nauseating result akin to gobbling paranoia-inducing psychedelics and engaging a high speed car chase. This is particularly the case in the closing 30 seconds of "Prometheans." Basically, the end of that song is the black metal sonic cousin to that creepy boat ride in the original Willy Wonka movie*. (Yes, the danger must be growing/For the rowers keep on rowing/And they're certainly not showing/Any signs that they are slowing!)

The truly ghastly howled and screeched vocals just add further to the malefic sonic package, doing noting positive whatsoever to lighten up the mood... instead they add another level of unease to the overall mood. If anything the shrieks are perhaps even more horrific while the band drunkenly stumble along at a 1st gear crawl.

A lot of seeming negative and disparaging remarks have been tossed around this review, but, as stated above, the intent of this band seems to be to create one harsh and hellish landscape. And in that context, I believe negativity was what they were aiming for - and have succeeded in nailing.





(* self-pwning review hijack... if you thought the original was creepy, it's even more bizarre in reverse. )