The abundance of music releases doesn’t make things easier for music reviewers. Sometimes we are forced to look back in the near past and swim like a salmon upstream to stumble upon interesting albums and share them with the dedicated music fans all over the world. The debut album Boezem of Vuur & Zijde (fire & silk) is one of those productions that we can only recommend. It would be shameful not to have grabbed this album from the never ending music tsunami.
Vuur & Zijde is a Dutch quintet (started as a trio) that has already in such a short notice made progress from pure (female fronted) black metal to a more complex hybrid form of metal. Surfing on the contemporary waves of the mysterious and spiritual infused Dutch black metal movement Vuur & Zijde fuse their black metal roots with gothic metal, shoegaze, post punk and shards of new wave into a versatile sonic monolith.
The band members Famke Canrinus (vocals), Nicky Heijmen (guitar, synths), Richard Japenga (drums), Carmen Raats (guitar) and Sylwin Cornielje (bass) have deep roots in the Dutch extreme music scene and were or are still part of some established bands as Laster, Nusquama, Grey Aura, Witte Wieven, Silver Knife and Terzij De Horde. Famke Canrinus sings in Dutch and Frisian about love, the liberation of intimacy and motherhood. Her dreamy voice reminds us a bit of another interesting Dutch band The Gathering, during the period when Anneke van Giersbergen was lead singer.
Vuur & Zijde ‘s guitar wall is a spicy mix of heavy riffs with new wave and post punk snare sounds like Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins) and The Cure. No need to say that from this combination styles Vuur & Zijde an own original sound. Boezem is a real grower and proves that the creative sound of Vuur & Zijde can also be fascinating without the use of misanthropic lyrics or dystopian atmospheres. This album is available as a 36-page hardcover CD artbook, as a limited (solid yellow, red & black) marbled vinyl LP and as a black vinyl LP.
