Consouling Sounds + Belgium = modern hard music. Throatsnapper is the exhibit to proof this theory.
What is is about this (territory-wise) small Western European country that they seem to produce another amazing band every week? Either it’s in the waters or they are doing something right there when it comes to supporting young artists. Consouling Sounds definitely does something right because by now it has become like a trademark for high-quality modern music based on sludge, black metal, noise, post-metal or anything else in that scheme outside mainstream music and beat-orientated noise. With Throatsnapper they simply prove this notion.
The quartet from Antwerp just published their debut full-length after releasing an EP in 2015. This new record is out since the end of October and I must admit that I kind of overlooked it ever since, shame on me. The record is really good and variable, even though people will say that there is no new twist to a genre that is running out of good ideas. However, one cannot deny the fact that Throatsnapper have a knack for songwriting and, even more important, for creating moods.
They are able to show up very different sides to their sound, somewhere between post-rock and post-metal and then again going all the way to doom. The basis for all of that is repetition and heaviness. Nevertheless, they are not searching for the loudest sound possible or the longest tracks imaginable, they always try to find what is best for the songs. There are six songs on “About the Dead” and they are quite different, “Another Way” is like a sludge-song flirting with post-metal; “From Wood to Gallows” shows a semi-acoustic intro with the bass as the lead-instrument; one could go on with each and every song, but there is one track that definitely stands out from the others even though all are talking about the death of beloved people: “Dodenmars” is the last and longest track on the album with nearly eight minutes – the name (‘March of the Dead’ in English) is pretty programmatic, the track is a march and one can see the funeral procession dressed all in black denim heads bowed to the rain following the coffin with the widow up front holding her head high not to show any emotion for the loss of her husband who died in an eighteenth century.
Blackness prevails when talking About the Dead just like the title itself says it. Let’s step out of the light.
