AN NCS PREMIERE: HEMELBESTORMER — “AFTER US, THE FLOOD”

We’re told that Hemelbestormer is a Dutch word that in its literal translation means “sky stormer” or “stormer of heaven” in English, but is also a name for someone with revolutionary views — an idealist, a maker of wild plans. It’s the name chosen by a collective of Belgian musicians whose debut album Aether will be released by Debemur Morti Productions, who of course have a long, proven history of embracing dark music that’s not cut from the common cloth. Hemelbestormer is yet another fascinating discovery.

Aether consists of four long songs, all of them falling in the range of 12 – 19 minutes, and we’re fortunate to bring you the album’s opening track, “After Us, The Flood”, accompanied by the imagery of a video that beautifully captures the song’s staggering and mesmerizing power.

The huge slow-motion storm waves in the video capture the similarly titanic surge of the track’s enormous riffs and shuddering drums. As geysers of sparkling water erupt against craggy shorelines, the song’s eerie, haunted melodies spiral up and out from the engulfing power in the music’s low end.

The scene shifts to other vistas of breathtaking natural wonder, both earthbound and interstellar, all of the panoramas humbling in their grandeur yet cold and barren. The music also captures sensations of vast cosmic beauty, with slow ethereal guitar notes shimmering like the glimmer of stars in the void, and it does so just as vividly as it brings the earth-splitting weight of a sonic avalanche.

Both crushing and entrancing, mountainous and spectral, this new Hemelbestormer song is a potent interweaving of sludge/doom and post-metal that’s a feast for the senses. If you’re like me, these 15 minutes will pass before you know it and you’ll wake from this dream wondering where you are.

Aether will be released on February 19. It was recorded and mixed by Lander Cluyse at Hearse Studio and mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege, with artwork by Kevin Hensels. To order the album, go HERE or HERE (on Bandcamp).

http://www.facebook.com/Hemelbestormer

http://www.debemur-morti.com
http://www.facebook.com/debemurmorti
http://dmp666.bandcamp.com