Underground Sounds: Grafjammer – Schalm & Schabauw

Label: Independent/Black Tapes
Band: Grafjammer
Origin: The Netherlands

Grafjammer has been hanging around Dutch graveyards and shady parts of harbors for a long while now, but only this year we can receive their second full length. The record, titled ‘Shalm & Schabauw’, contains primitive, violent black metal. The way you love it.

The band has members active in a variety of acts. From Wrang and Wesenwille to Kutschurft, it’s extreme all over. The group sticks to Dutch folklore and nautical themes in their music, which feels as vital as ever on this latest musical endeavor.

Oh yes, this record opens with the pounding punky beat you would be hoping for on an old-fashioned, raw black metal album. Tremolo riffs that immediately predict danger, violent vocals that spit venom. Grafjammer is the real thing, with their wonky, primitive sound on opener ‘Het Rottende Schompes’. The band can go to greater depths though, with the true visceral depravity displayed on ‘Drijvende Doodskist’, with vocals that sound truly demented.

With ‘Hijs het Lijk’, the band moves towards the more thunderous, almost doomy side of their sound. Still greatly enhanced by gritty sound and buzzsaw guitars, the song takes a slow pace full of rattling and noise. The lyrics rely on Dutch culture and tradition but bends and twist it to display a rotten core at the center of this. The results are grim and apocalyptic. If you manage to envision some paintings from the classic Dutch school, with Grafjammer playing, everything will turn to ashes.

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