Band:	Verwoed
Album:	The Mother
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	March 29, 2024
A review by:	RaduP

01. A Prayer Of Blood And Fire
02. The Mother
03. Seven Trumpets
04. The Child
05. The Madman's Dance
06. A Choir Of Null And Void
07. Death In A Rosary

With Roadburn week over and me slowly going back to my usual routine, it's time to reflect and look back on what I ended up seeing and what I ended up skipping, and most importantly, to make amends.

Considering how Roadburn is a festival where you can have four artists playing at the same time albeit on different stages, it's no rare event to find more than one band you want to see but being unable to see both of their sets in full. Compromises like seeing a bit of one and a bit of the other are ones I sometimes make, but queues and the fear of missing out make me prefer not to do that unless the time overlap is small enough to deserve a jump between stages. As a result, some sets that I really wish I saw end up on my skip list in the detriment of another. Verwoed is a band I have already reviewed before, and coming from the Dutch black metal scene that has already been spotlighted by Roadburn time and time again, it made so much sense that they would eventually make their live return there as well. With them announcing a live performance of this very album in full, one I had already placed in my queue upon its announcement, it was almost a guarantee for excitement. Almost. Until I saw they were clashing with Neptunian Maximalism's set. Christ.

Alright, the clash wasn't as huge of an overlap, with the former half of Verwoed's set clashing with a commissioned project involving Die Wilde Jagd, but the logistics of moving between stages, the size of stages and the calculations of how early to arrive before it gets too crowded meant that even if I were to try and catch some of Verwoed's set, it would either be barely any of it or it would place me in danger of not finding any room in the room that Neptunian Maximalism were playing in. Given how I caught a couple of the other black metal bands that performed that day on the same stage as Verwoed, I know I would've been in for a treat had I chosen differently. I didn't, even I was already aware of how odd and nonetheless engaging The Mother is.

I already praised De Val for how it managed to take cues from different branches of black metal like the dissonant or crusty or psychedelic ones without completely committing to them, something that made it a pretty interesting listen. I still had qualms with how some of the mid paced moments can feel a bit monotonous. The Mother is cut from mostly the same cloth, with my qualms reduced and the things that made its predecessor interesting improved. I feel an even stronger push towards psychedelia a la Oranssi Pazuzu, something that does work with the more mid-paced approach to give it a dark ritualistic edge, something that, in tandem with its sense of oblique melodies can also have a slight gothic touch, and one wouldn't be remiss to notice some prog rock influences in how unconventional some melodies are. It is a bit odd to still have complaints about monotonous moments, as to me it feels like Verwoed's skeleton is monotonous mid-paced black metal, but played in such an unconventional and intriguing way that most of it is mutated from being monotonous.

Given the improvements compared to De Val, an already fascinating and promising album, The Mother is a fulfilment of some of its potential and a tantalizing listen on its own, both in terms of the project's evolution, its place within the local scene and the black metal sound as a whole, and as an album within its own right. Room for improvement still exists, and it might prove more fruitful if my first live contact with the band ends up being a follow-up album that fulfils all that potential.