Artist: Sammath
Country: The Netherlands
Label: Hammerheart Records
Formats: LP / CD
Year: 2023
The award for most persistent Dutch Black Metal band goes to Sammath without question; ever since their formation in 1994, the band has stuck (for the most part) to a fairly set musical recipe. However, no matter how hard the band has tried, having now arrived at long-player number seven, Sammath has never really received the appreciation it actually deserves based on its musical output. Even while the Dutch Black Meal scene has been on the rise for the last couple of years, Sammath seems to benefit from this only sparsely. Whereas many young bands from Dutch soil are aiming high, even internationally, Sammath remains in a modest background.
Fortunately, though, the band can still count on the support of Hammerheart Records, which makes up a good part of its “backlog”, if you wish to call it that. Because Sammath’s musical range or Black Metal aesthetic is by no means in question. Although the trio are not in an excessive hurry to release their albums, we are still regularly treated to a new work. It may not be all that astonishing and you can rightly argue whether everything from Sammath’s discography is equally essential, the band never delivers junk.
The band’s latest offering, ‘Grebbeberg’, is no exception to that account. The largely up-tempo Black Metal, of even high-speed Black Metal, is still very much in line with any of their most recent albums. In the past, the band has quite often been disparagingly dismissed as “the Dutch Marduk”, referring mainly to the Swedish genre icons’ ‘Panzer Division Marduk’-era – something to which Sammath’s wartime-drenched theme also contributed, of course. While that claim may not be entirely unjustified, it need not, of course, mean a total disqualification. And as far as I am concerned, it indeed doesn’t, on ‘Grebbeberg’ Sammath shows that it knows how to bring exciting and well-written Black Metal with its foot firmly on the accelerator. The riffs, played at full speed, together with the constantly pounding drums form a smothering package. However, the band does not forget to incorporate enough melody and thus secure a certain form of dynamics and variety. With this, then, Sammath does manage to stand out from the more one-dimensional ultra-fast late-90’s Black Metal and, fair enough, from some of their own records too.
It always feels a bit easy to describe a new album jubilantly as “the best since…/ever”, but I think it’s certainly not a wrong conclusion to say that Sammath has outdone themselves with ‘Grebbeberg’. Obviously, some of that also has to do with personal preferences and frames of reference, but either way, this latest effort sounds a lot more appealing than the previous somewhat gruff-sounding ‘Across the Rhine Is Only Death’ (2019). The somewhat more organic sound that gives much more space to the melody adds an inciting epic to the music, which is definitely a huge boost to the overall experience of ‘Grebbeberg’.
As always, the band also has plenty of stories to tell, on ‘Grebbeberg’ the band once again brings an interesting history lesson in musical form. The concept album tells the story of the three-day battle at Grebbeberg fought in the first May days of 1940. With another valuable reminder of the Dutch wartime history, Sammath comes full circle and delivers exactly what we have come to expect from them for almost three decades – nothing less, nothing more either, but this time brought a lot more convincingly, though.
