Maurice de Jong is the most interesting man in extreme music. Primarily known for his experimental black metal project Gnaw Their Tongues, he’s been involved with about 42 different projects that range from the most savage and tormented sounds you’ve ever heard to freakin’ dungeon synth. These projects are also mostly him firing away on his own like the ADHD-riddled genius that he is.
His "pure" black metal project Hagetisse is not what he is best known for, but its by design and new album The Fountain of Fallen Stars will keep it this way.
By "pure" black metal I don’t mean any racial undertones or anything. Hagetisse is where Maurice de Jong scratches his itch for raw, old school, straightforward black metal and also ours. It starts right away with Dwars door de tijd ruik je de verbranding (You can smell the combustion right through time), an intense blast beat, tremolo picking heavy affair that stands out by its unrelenting aggression, dueling guitars and oddly melodic solos. It’s as straightforward as it gets, but it’s very rich in terms of composition and sound texture.
The riffs on the follow-up Drink from the Fountain of Fallen Stars will bring you back to the olden days of tape trading where you would stumble upon wonders by pure accident. They’re compact and in-your-face, but also evocative and melodic. They’re ear candy if you’re into black metal. Maurice de Jong delivers a spectacular and versatile vocal performance that includes a clever whispered segment that adds atmosphere in an unlikely setting. I love how the songs brutally start and stop too. It’s such a tiny detail, but it enhances the eerie, old school atmosphere.
Als alles een laatste keer is (When everything is one last time?) marches on in a similar direction than the first two songs. The vocal performance once again stands out, though. The man we call Mories goes for the Ildjarn-like croak with the occasional spoken word. You can feel the apocalyptic urgency in his voice and in the dramatic, galloping guitar riffs. The relentless pounding continues De sterren sterven langzaam uit (The stars are slowly dying out), which I believe is the first track that includes synths? This one has a fun, noisy drum performance hiding out under the layers of unrelenting riffs. I love how de Jong goes from intense tremolo picking to longer, stretched out riffs that serve almost as a background to synth passages. One of my favorite songs on the record for sure. It’s raw, but multifaceted.
The second half of The Fountain of Fallen Stars kicks off with De ogen van de nacht (The eyes of the night). It’s the longest song of the record at one second short of five minutes. I don’t have much to say about it that I didn’t say about Als alles een laatste keer is, but the fury with which it is interpreted is so fucking satisfying. I can’t stress this enough. Power and the intensity pulse out of these songs as if they were ancient artifacts. Mories channeled something nasty on this record. De troon blijft leeg (The throne remains empty) goes as hard as anything else on The Fountain of Fallen Stars. It has a sincere, byzantine melancholy that expresses itself best in de Jong’s vocals and in strings passages. It’s another highlight on the record if you ask me. It has a lot of tremolo picking and blast beats, but it reaches way beyond the bare bones of black metal.
Verdrinken in angst (Drowning in fear) features black metal shrieks and gurgled growls by Maurice de Jong and some of his most passionate, intricate riffing. Once again he manages to build something intelligent that transcends its own blazing power. That man has an uncanny talent at writing between the lines, at creating nuances and beauty in the most rigid structures. The closer The First Dark is both eerie and inevitable at the same time. I loved the tense and ominous synth like and the melodic riff in the middle that worked through colossal power in the delivery. It felt like reaching the end of a journey, battered and bloodied up, unsure whether you’re going to survive.
The Fountain of Fallen Stars is a real nostalgic trip, but it’s not quite nineties black metal worship. It would’ve absolutely blasted us out of our computer chairs if it had come out in like, 1998. It’s a quite specific kind of listen and it is intended to be so. If you feel cold and grim and resentful at the entire human race, this will definitely scratch your itch. I don’t think The Fountain of Fallen Stars is meant to be listened to on repeat, but it gets more than the job done as a "break glass in case of emergency" type of deal.
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