ANDE - Het Gebeente
Self Released
One man black metal projects have always been hit and miss for me. In the late 90's every kid in their bedroom or basement wanted to be BURZUM. Soon after they all wanted to be XASTHUR and so on. Years ago I asked myself why are these guys so depressed? If it wasn't for all of this modern technology they'd still be writing in diaries. Now be that as it may I think the past five years have been good for all of the do it yourself black metal projects. They've expanded their themes, the production values have risen and our acceptance has broadened.
Case in point here's ANDE, aka: Jimmy Christiaens (WARNING: if you look up this guy on Metal Archives and see his photo you'll have question marks floating in your head, just saying. Hell it looks like a DMV photo.) But anyways Jimmy or Jim is from Belgian and ANDE is his one man black metal project which he started back in 2015. This is his second full length. I saw something in the promo material peeked my interest. According to Jimmy or Jim, ANDE is his personal way to honor black metal that was, is and will be. Really? Ya mean like in borrowing someone else's creative vision and repeating it?
The only thing Het Gebeente has that stands out is the production quality. I'll also toss in that not all of this is generic atmospheric black metal. On the cut "Oud en Vet" the guy actually breaks out into some black & roll. He must of been having a good day during that recording. The opening keyboard intro track is self indulged garbage, generic and boring. The outro is synthesized earth fart type hypnotic horror psych. Please, Varg did it better with a Casio keyboard. "Leeg" is a decent blackened doom cut that Jimmy or Jim just rips apart with blast beats and a good tremolo picked riff to end it all.
Even with good production values Jimmy or Jim does keep some rawness. His singing voice sounds like his throat is made of sandpaper, that's a good thing. Although if you take out the intro/outros you'll left with four tracks. All of which are not huge standouts that make your imagination wonder into blackened realms. Hell I wouldn't even fold laundry to it. I guess that's why there's a huge difference between honoring black metal and creating it.
Rating: 1/5
https://andeband.wordpress.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Ande-1656865081244578/
https://ande-be.bandcamp.com/
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