By Jase Walker
One of the best things about buggering off to another country as a music fan is discovering a treasure trove of bands that you would have never heard of prior to them getting big enough to visit where you lived prior. Tonight’s show at Patronaat in Haarlem, Can Of Worms, is headed up by two bands I’ve come across through going to shows this year, Throwing Bricks and Ontaard.
Throwing Bricks blew me away supporting Julie Christmas in Utrecht and I was genuinely questioning why Arctangent hadn’t grabbed them yet and Ontaard supported Agriculture in Amsterdam’s OCCII venue and similarly were absolutely smashing. Both of these have a collaborative album that dropped this year, ‘Oud Zeer‘, which they’ll be playing through tonight in a seamless back to back transition between the two bands playing their own sets.
The first band, Living In Hatred kicks off with some real far distorted bass, it’s time for some 2-steppy hardcore with some delicious thrash inspired riffy goodness mixed in. I’m half watching myself just in case someone decides to get a bit swingy with their arms, not keen on losing my beer. This is the kind of grassroots sort of show I’ve been looking for, a bunch of bands kicking arse in a dark room with a bunch of people wanting to throw down. These guys sound raw and meaty and have got the right sort of energy and sound for a show like this, riffs riffs riffs, fuck everything else. No room for clean vocals here, it’s all pure grit and disgusting growls, whether they’re going at it full send or hitting those chugs some some Gojira worship pick scrapes, these guys are properly hammering it. There’s definitely a bit of Slayer worship in here with these rapid fire riffs, Living In Hatred has been a proper non-stop onslaught of energy and what a way to get a show like this started.
Next up is the awesomely named Rampant Unlicensed Dentistry Enterprise as a harsh noise act. I was expecting people on the stage but they’ve just rolled out a table with several bizarre looking sets of electronics while they wear chicken looking balaclavas. Admittedly this is absolutely not what I was expecting to say the least, it’s a bizarre combination of feedback, scraping noise and what I would expect a video on Reddit’s FearMe subreddit would be backed by. They’ve even got some sort of bizarre metal tong attached to the table that they scrape a file along to create even more horrific noises. One of them does a headstand on a floor pedal before falling forwards into the crowd and then drags themselves back to the table.
This is definitely going in as one of the more bizarre sets I’ve seen, genuinely not sure what to make of this. Screaming into a mouth attached mic and storming into the crowd this show just gets weirder and weirder while the feedback for the noise grows ever more intense. I think this is going to be one of those styles that I may never truly understand, it’s certainly interesting to say the least because of how it’s one of the most abstract forms of music I think I’ve ever heard. Overall this seems to be a style that tests how far something can go before blowing a PA system out after clipping the ever loving shit out of every possible frequency. It’s good for some but for me, I don’t think I could get my head round this.
Right it’s time for Throwing Bricks to start their show and I’m curious to see how they do their phasing through the shared set into Ontaard. Throwing Bricks kick off and that familiar monstrous sound hits real hard especially in a low ceiling venue like Patronaat’s third stage, this is a much more intimate affair this time round. This is the sort of vibe you’d expect from the likes of The Ocean, brash vocals mixed with thundering chugs, lovely stuff. I hope Pelagic Records takes note of these sooner or later because they’d fit that roster like a glove. The unrelenting, lumbering rhythm, harmonised atmospheric leads, fat bass and screamed uncleans are exactly what I love about post-metal styled music and Throwing Bricks are definitely it.
The sort of style they roll with is what drew me into this genre in the first place, it’s such a meaty yet atmospheric sound that is incredibly dark and brooding yet gives way to such bright and euphoric moments. Their singer, clearly tired of people not stepping quite as forward as he’d like, decides it’s time to bring the band to them by jumping off stage and getting stuck into people’s faces while screaming down the mic, that’s how a performer properly does it!
This sort of style is a firm favourite for me as it blends quiet moments with forceful passages that really drives home the heaviness. These along with more or less every band on the Pelagic Records roster uses this to great effect.
And now it’s time for the fastest changeover you’ve ever seen as we switch to the ‘Oud Zeer’ material with half and half of Throwing Bricks and Ontaard. Collaborations like this are super interesting to me as I’m a big fan of Conjurer and Pijn’s Curse These Metal Hands. Without skipping a beat, it’s time to go with Throwing Ontaard. The subtle guitar melody is pierced by an onslaught of harsh noise, just in time to move to a quiet moment as there’s more switching as we change over to Ontaard.
It’s fantastic to be able to catch these again after their support show of Agriculture. Filthy blackened riffs, aggressive spoken word parts mixed with horrific uncleans, this is how Ontaard rolls. Watching this sort of performance you can see why they were such a good fit for Agriculture, such a well put together style of blackened metal that takes the fantastic melodic elements of it and merges it with their own brand of raw energy. When most bands would opt for some sort of sample of the spoken words part, their singer instead opts to deliver it with her own anger drenched emotion. Ontaard have a very unique delivery that builds up into an incredible peak, it reminds me a bit of Svalbard’s unrepentant anger over their subject matter. The way this band escalates their songs blows me away every bit as much as the first time, you feel every single drip of defiant anger that their singer puts into her screaming, every single last drop of emotion.
It’s not like it’s all brutality though, there’s a beautiful melodic element in their sound that drives home the melancholic side, it feels so wonderfully sad. If you know the sort of haunting sound the likes of Hundred Year Old Man or MØL have then you’ll know what I mean. Ontaard are a very intense experience, the mix of spoken word, screaming and ever more intense musical elements drives home what is a fantastic experience to watch for an evening.
The Netherlands is fostering some brilliant metal talent right now and I feel privileged to be part of this hotbed of it. I hope to become ever more involved in the grassroots scene across this country and discovering both Throwing Bricks and Ontaard has been a big highlight of this year. What a great evening it’s been, I don’t doubt I’ll see these again many times again in the future to come.
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