Aural Aggravation

Relapse Records – 25th June 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

With everything they do so heavily steeped in a deep sense of ritual, a new album by Amenra is not simply something that happens, it’s a happening, a grand unveiling to reveal something far greater than simply a set of songs. It’s something spiritual, cosmic, and even cataclysmic. And whereas some bands who aspire to such elevation are prone to presenting as pompous and pretentious, something about Amenra – and it’s not just their sincerity – transcends that.

On the subject of transcending boundaries, De Doorn marks a break from the linear sequence of the band’s previous releases, Mass I-VI. While bands conventionally eschew their native languages in favour of English in order to garner a broader commercial appeal, for De Doorn, Amenra have elected to mark another departure in being the first Amenra album to be sung entirely in Flemish. But in certain genres, at least, the language of sound and of music transcends the language of words, and as the press release suggests, ‘De Doorn imparts a universal power by digging deep into local customs. Not just allowing for a greater range of expression through the intimacy, allowances and layers of meaning granted by your native tongue, it takes inspiration from Flemish forms such as Kleinkunst, a folk-based musical wave driven by storytelling, and the passing of wisdom through generations’.

‘Ogentroost’ builds a slow, ominous intro, with slow, dolorous surges fading to silence like a slow-building tide. Colin H. Van Eeckhout’s vocal is hushed, a blank stage whisper against a picked guitar that in time replaces the doomy ambient tones: it’s fully four minutes before the first crushing power chord crashes in and the album’s first monumental, lumbering riff breaks out. But once it does, it’s all a fury. The pace picks up and Van Eeckhout’s finds his raw-throated anguished scream.

Excepting the interlude that is ‘De Dood in Bloie’, ‘De Evenmens’ is the shortest song on the album, clocking in at a mere eight minutes.

There is very much an evolving and emerging sense of formula present on Dr Doorn: the hushed, delicate intro, a long, slow build… and build… before the full-force guitars and howling anguished vocals crash in, pulverisingly heavy, crushing. ‘Het Glooren’ is a crawler – a majestic, lumbering crawler that has that grainy, organic richness of the best of Neurosis, with a picked lead guitar chiming and weaving textures over a dense backdrop of overdrive. Around the mid-point, everything drops out leaving just spoken words and sparse guitar picking an almost medieval motif… and then everything piledrives in, heavier than ever, and it hits like a tsunami, a soul-smashing blast of devastation. Van Eeckhout sounds shriller, more pained, more desperate, than ever, and it’s a hard, harrowing experience.

They really do save the best – and most fully representative – till last. ‘Voor Immer’ is another slow-building slow-burner that absolutely explodes. It takes around eight minutes for it to happen, but when it does, the guitars absolutely TEAR and SHRED and it’s a punishing blast. It doesn’t only touch your soul, it squeezes it, works it like a putty made of raw meat and emotion. And never mind that the words to the songs of De Doorn are inaccessible to any non-speakers of Flemish: even when singing in English, deciphering the words was difficult, and in such circumstances it comes down to the articulation oof emotion through voice in a way that goes far beyond language.

De Doorn is by no means an easy album and it’s not an album that one can dip in and out of. Similarly, there are no songs that stand out as particular highlights, or as having a memorable hook. Instead, what one takes away from the album is an overarching sense of a certain kind of experience, and it’s one that is defined by the contrasts – the lengthy quiet passages, which are melodic, contemplative, evocative, perhaps a little post-rock in orientation, pitched against the roaring explosive segments that are beyond immense. And, in this context of the fill breadth of the sonic and emotional experience that it provides, De Doorn is something else. Not an album so much to listen to, as an album to live through.

AA