Richard HolmesTerzij De Horde – Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone (Church Road Records)
Blackened hardcore? Charred crust? Burnt post-rock?
In this case, we’ll leave genre tags up to Bandcamp’s admins.
Utrecht’s Terzij De Horde almost certainly don’t care how they’re labelled, as long as their music connects.
Which it does.
Absolutely and unrelentingly.
For 43 white hot minutes.
Like Calligram, Ancst and Oathbreaker, Terzij De Horde bend black metal to their will. Blastbeats, blistering tremolo picking, necro dynamics… they’re just elements used for sonic alchemy, creating an elixir of total annihilation. Intensity is their identity. And Joost Vervoort is the spearhead, his roar reminiscent of the late great Tompa Lindberg, and Wolfbrigade’s Mikael Dahl.
Certainly, the ferocity has ramped up since the quintet’s 2015 debut, Self. The blades have been sharpened in the intervening years. Terzij De Horde sound leaner and meaner, as the de facto opener, Raise Them Towards The Sun, illustrates. Each Breath A Flame acts as its menacing, elongated intro, before a torrent of hellfire is unleashed – and Vervoot asks, “Do we dare to go under, to embrace the glare of a common purpose, so the world may be razed?”. Like much of this opus, it’s not so much a song, as an exercise in catharsis.
But for all their aggression, we’re also dealing with a highly inventive act, who don’t shy away from extending themselves. 2022’s stunning EP, In One Of These, I Am Your Enemy, shook the BM world with 11-minute plus title track and the near 14-minute Precipice, works of cinematic grandeur and great vision. Here, they close proceedings with the equally ambitious Discarding All Adornments, a composition graced by Cinder Well’s Amelia Baker: delicately playing with themes of rebirth, the Californian creates moments of serenity in a seething storm. And on Justice Is Not Enough To Leave The House Of Modernity, Terzij De Horde open up a kaleidoscopic vortex, in a manner akin to Belgian noise mystics Wiegedood.
Indeed, there’s real depth to Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone. It’s alight with passion, fervour and ideas.
You can lose yourself in the tumult, revel in its subtleties, or mainline the record’s intoxicating, primal energy.
Ignoring it? That’s simply out of the question…
