TERZIJ DE HORDE – OUR FLESH IS NOT OURS ALONE

(Andy Synn takes a breath before diving in to the new album from Terzij de Horde)

There’s a certain sense of satisfaction to be had from knowing just how long we’ve been writing about the work of Dutch Black Meta/Hardcore crew Terzij de Horde.

As a matter of fact, their debut album, Self (which turns ten years old later this month) has the distinction of being an all-time favourite of mine, while this interview with the group that I conducted back in 2016 remains (in my opinion at least) one of the most interesting and in-depth discussions I’ve ever had with a band.

Which is why I’ve been looking forward so much to the release of their upcoming third album, Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone, which comes out this Friday.

If you’re not familiar with the group before now, then what you should prepare yourself for before listening to Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone is seven tracks of unyielding fury and electrifying melody which combine the fiery instrumental intensity of Black Metal with the fierce emotional urgency of Punk and Hardcore.

Not only that but, as a band who wear their ideals front and centre, marrying both poetry and politics in equal measure, there’s an undercurrent of scalding desperation and searing discontent running through each and every song, a sense of time running out and walls closing in, that makes every scorching scream and clashing chord feel that much more vital and visceral.

With a feral cry of “Do we dare to crawl out of a history of cowardice, out of shadowed towers at supremacy’s heart?” scene-setting introductory track “Each Breath Is A Flame” lays down the gauntlet, challenging the audience to take a true and uncompromising account of themselves and the world in which they live, which the heart-racing assault of “Raise Them Towards the Sun” then picks up and runs with at a ferocious, face-melting pace.

And while the album, from this point on, rarely lets up – delivering an almost unrelenting bombardment of venom and violence that puts the band on a par with the likes of Trespasser, Hexis, and Downfall of Gaia in terms of pure, focussed power – a closer listen will quickly reveal all the hidden subtleties working their magic just beneath the seething surface of the band’s sound.

“The Shadows of Prefiguration”, for example, is shot through with pulsing veins of moody melody which eventually burst through the song’s skin during it’s gloomier, groovier second half, while “The All-Consuming Work Of The Soul’s Foreclosing” marries tumultuous aggression and tightly-wound tension in a way which conjures a greater and more organic sense of “atmosphere” than a lot of so-called “Atmospheric Black Metal” bands ever actively manage to create.

Similarly, there are elements of doomy glamour and punky vigour to “Justice Is Not Enough to Leave The House of Modernity”, which features some of the darkest, moodiest moments on the album alongside passages of the most punishing intensity the band have ever produced, all adorned with bursts of piercing melody and waves of brooding ambience, while colossal closer “Discarding All Adornments” combines extremes of both chaos and calm across nine-and-a-half minutes of misery and majesty (aided and abetter by a sublime guest spot from Amelia Baker of Cinder Well fame).

On first listen, of course, these nuances might not be immediately apparent – your first impression, in all likelihood, is going to be akin to stepping into the maw of a hurricane – but this is one album which both requires and rewards multiple listens for you to truly understand just how good, and just how rich in both meaning and emotion, it truly is.