Photo: Gilles Dewalque
Belgian dark pop duo KØCAZE releases their haunting and evocative new EP D’Or et de Sang via Dune Altar. Across six intricately layered tracks, the band dives into themes of grief, transformation, and ancestral memory, weaving neoclassical instrumentation, electronic textures, and brooding dark pop sensibilities into a deeply affecting body of work.
KØCAZE is a collaboration between Belgian artists Elsa Verhoeven and Olivier Jacqmin – two musical opposites who fuse classical training and instinctive experimentation into a sound that is dark, layered, and emotionally resonant.
Formed in Liège during the early pandemic lockdowns, KØCAZE released their first EP The Drift in 2020, a self-recorded effort that laid the foundation for what would come. But it wasn’t until a pivotal creative turning point – sparked by a studio session in Ghent and the encouragement to write in their native French – that the project began to fully take shape.
With D’Or et de Sang, KØCAZE builds on that clarity. The EP balances raw emotion and elegant restraint, blending voice, piano, guitar, and electronics into dense, cinematic compositions. It’s a deeply human record – an excavation of fear, identity, and transformation.
Chanson, strings and dour Scandi-sounding guitar create a maelstrom of emotions in the great French tradition of the three P’s: poetry, passion and pessimism. Like a moth circling a candle, we spiral from one track to another, wings singed and smouldering, but somehow surviving to escape into the dawn.
Sung almost entirely in French, Elsa Verhoeven’s voice channels the great chanteurs: the ardent introspection of Barbara, the whispered intensity of Brel and, surprisingly, the unending yearning of Evanescence’s Amy Lee.
This is not simply dream pop or dark pop, nor is it doom gaze or dark wave, but something utterly unique. This is Chant Noir, and it will leave you spellbound.
D’Or et de Sang is released on July 11 2025 via Dune Altar Records and can be purchased and streamed here on Bandcamp.
Produced and mixed by Ben Chisholm (Chelsea Wolfe, BloodMoon), and mastered by Alan Douches at West West Side Music, with cover artwork by Belgian visual artist Luc Lamy
