New album, “Klaagliederen”, out on November 6th!
Written and recorded over the past few years, Klaagliederen is the debut album from POLDERHAAT, a two-piece black metal project from Amsterdam. The band’s name reflects their calling, being a portmanteau of the words “haat” (hate) and “polder,” an untranslatable Dutch term referring to an artificial strip of land reclaimed from the sea by using windmills in medieval times.
Touching on religion, hard labor and punishment, Klaagliederen is a collection of laments centered on the hardships of Dutch life during the Middle Ages, relegated by historians to a period of obscurity, repression, and religious fanaticism.
The searing fury of POLDERHAAT’s primal black metal is grounded in raw, dry sounds, but the riffs are epic, the melodies elegiac, and the occasional inserts of trombone, strings, and liturgical choirs (such as the Kyrie Eleison at the end of Ellende) help lift the spirits above human misery.
With its hypnotic, almost psychedelic sounds, Klaagliederen revives the glories of the most authentic depressive black metal thanks to a sincere and heartfelt melancholy that envelops each composition, a profound existential reflection that translates into music charged with pathos and devastating emotional intensity.
