Band:	Fluisteraars
Album:	Bloem
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	February 2020

01. Tere Muur
02. Nasleep
03. Eeuwige Ram
04. Vlek
05. Maanruïne

What could possibly be more Dutch than flower-themed black metal?

Maybe just being the last successful invaders of Britain. But other than that, Fluisteraars, whose band name to this day I have to copy-paste, embody both what I think of the Netherlands usually, and what I think of the Dutch black metal scene as of late. You can read more about the latter in these two reviews, so how about we talk about the former.

I admittedly don't have that much experience with the Dutch culture, other than me going there once for Roadburn and being subsequently asked by my friends whether I indulged in prostitutes or weed. And me being there for a festival instead of a usual quotidian Dutch lifestyle might have had me biased, but I damn enjoyed my time there. I had trouble figuring out what souvenirs to take home to my relatives who weren't into music, so I settled for some wooden tulips. And while I listened to and enjoyed a lot of Dutch black metal, it wasn't until Bloem (coincidentally meaning "flower[s?]" in Dutch) that I felt a déjà vu for it.

Fluisteraars make atmospheric black metal, but they could quite fool you that it isn't really because of how direct it is. But there is a lot of atmosphere-building repetition and hushed layers of instrumentation that do complete the picture and create some warm hazy black metal. There's some really triumphant sounding trumpets and timpanis at times that work much better than expected without sounding corny under those hazy but raw guitars, creating that pastoral feel that you don't often get in black metal. But it still is black metal, it's raw like black metal, and feels like black metal, but black metal doesn't usually feel like this, and there's the beauty in Bloem: their subversion of black metal doesn't feel dishonest or provocative, but showing love and appreciation both for the grittiest of black metal and the haziest of psych/alt rock.

Indeed, the latter element of this sound could be traced back to a lot of places, some late 60s psychedelic rock, some 90s shoegaze, some folk melodies, some electronica, some epic choir folk, but usually just something to make the black metal feel like it drowned out in the sun. Like black metal in a warm summer day in a field of poppies. And how deceptively simple and straightforward it sometimes feels. It works so well not only in its experimentation in sound, but due to how well they master these sounds and how well written these melodies are, even if they are more often than not fairly simple. But everything feels natural and flows so well.

I really wish history would treat this album rightly and make it more than just "one of those great Dutch black metal albums from 2020", because it really doesn't feel like just another of anything.