Brakel (Belgium) — Wranger Wanen — 2024 full length

The debut album of this Belgium act. Having released previously, in 2022 their demo “Akelven” through Final Agony Records, on this second offering Signal Rex welcomes Brakel as a spokesperson to spew the vile and putrescence needed for this Walpurgis Night. There is an obvious relationship between noise, power electronics, ambient and black metal which work in their favour to create a rather harsh piece of music. There is however one change from the debut, as this time Brakel opts to centre its sonic rampage on black metal, rather than electronic genres as seen before. Despite that, the voyage is quite similar and powerful as before. What attracts me for Brakel’s concept, even more than the first one, is because these genres that often might come across as something immiscible, here as on Brakel’s debut it melts together as an embodiment of the blackened soul and once again creating this solid testament to this art that many call black metal, but as we can see here goes much beyond that.