Late last week we started a mini-series of posts on long songs, because coincidentally we came across a group of metal bands with recent releases of music that included longer-than-average songs. And of course it doesn’t take much to launch us off on a tangent.
So far, we’ve featured long songs by Brooklyn’s Hull and Oregon’s Agalloch. Today, we’re venturing overseas with a post about an unsigned Dutch band called Akelei.
The music of Akelei is doom. As you will know if you’re a regular NCS reader, doom metal isn’t a genre we spend much time covering. That’s because we’re not big fans of doom. And since we’re not big fans, we’re pretty ignorant about the genre. Or, to be precise, we’re even more ignorant than we are about everything else.
Akelei have been in existence since 2006, and in that time have produced a 2008 demo, a 2010 single called “Dwaaluur”, and, as of about 3 days ago, a debut full-length album called De Zwaarte Van Het Doorstane, which is Dutch for . . . something. Google Translate says it means “The Gravity of Weathered”, but we’re pretty sure something got lost in that translation.
What we do know is that the album is almost 55 minutes long — and includes only five songs. In many ways, it’s the opposite of what we usually like — but man, have we been hypnotized by this music. (more after the jump, including a long song to hear . . .) Continue reading »
