Netherlands

Netherlands – Severance Review

Netherlands – Severance Review

Netherlands has been kicking, screaming, and blowing out subs with furiously fuzzed twangs for a little over ten years now. Up until receiving this promo for their seventh album, Severance, I had no idea this band existed. Powered primarily by Brooklyn native Timo Ellis, ever busy with various groups (Cibo Matto and Morningwood, to name a couple) ranging from power pop to stoner rock to art rock, Netherlands explores the loudest and proudest of what the multi-instrumentalist has assembled over the years.” No sleep til…Netherlands!

Melechesh – The Epigenesis Review

Melechesh – The Epigenesis Review

While the metal world has gone agog for Egyptian metal, and actually I’ve seen these guys linked up with Nile and Aeternam in other places, Melechesh is a unique band in that they are ultimately Sumerian metal. What’s the difference you say? Well, melodically not much. However, Sumeria is a totally fascinating historical place which was where modern day Iraq is (which is technically Mesopotamia, Sumeria was a grouping of city-states, this also includes the Israel and Palestine region). It is considered by most Biblical scholars to be the place where the “tribes of Israel” and the other natives of the region must have come from and it is south of or in the Fertile Crescent, which for anyone who knows their history is where agriculture is supposed to have come from. Some of the oldest texts in the world that we’ve ever found are Sumerian (written in Cuneiform) and the culture was highly advanced in math (inventing the abacus) and writing.