Friday, 2010-09-03
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| Verkrag - 13 Victims |
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| Written by KevinR |
| Friday, 21 May 2010 15:09 |
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Verkrag is a South-African black metal project by Anton von Niekerk. Anton started Verkrag in 2008 after disbanding his previous project Sanguinarius. Last december he released his first Verkrag-album: 13 Victims Band: Verkrag Album: 13 Victims Label: self-released Releasedate: December 13th 2009  Review: Anton calls his music 'psychotic black metal'. Outgoing from the lyrical content and the artwork, we sure know what he means. Lyricalwise the whole album tells a story about a killer who gets flashbacks about his childhood and his incestuous relationship with his sister. Later he starts saving prostitutes from the streets by killing them. When he's an older man, he adores the purity of little girls, and starts to torture, rape, kill and eat them before they can become unpure... In the asylum, all victims haunt him, without knowing if it are ghosts or just something in his mind (we see him sitting in a dirty psychiatric hospital)... Now up to the music... After checking out the lyrical content about whores, perversity, ... I was wondering if Verkrag would look like those other sexual pervs... Cradle of Filth. A first quick run through the album proved us the opposite. Where Cradle sounds a lot more bombastic, Verkrag is a lot more old school. Verkrag fits a lot better the perverse lyrics, in my opinion. The album starts with 'Insanitory' which is a nice intro. It starts very smoothly but with the screams in the background, we get prepared for what is coming. In the next song, we enter the 'Asylum'. The tone is set... old school black metal riffing with some synths who make the atmosphere going below 0 degrees. Especially when we hear the sick killer screaming/shouting of Anton, it becomes ugly... But we want to see the sick bastard suffering, isn't it?! Glad this is the longest song than. Third song is 'Incestuous', where the flashbacks to his childhood begin... The song starts slowly and goes uptempo, with a mechanical sounding Anton. From time to time we hear Kerri-An Venter, one of the alternative models Anton used for the art work. Kerri-An is the devilish sister who wants to be fucked. Her 'spoken word' guest vocals make the story complete and give an extra atmosphere to the songs. The story continues with 'The cleansing of the whores' and 'Little girls'... Song number six, 'Sweet Dreams (are made of this)', you probably know from the Eurythmics hit in the 80's. Verkrag took the version of that other "perv", shockrocker Marilyn Manson. Maybe a little strange to coöperate this song into the story, but Anton made an excellent Verkrag-version of the MM cover, and also lyrically this song fits well in the story. After all the violence, musical and lyricwise, we get a nice instrumental song (except all the whispering, shouting, crying voices in the background). Then it's time for the penultimate song '13 Victims'. Unlike the previous 'IncestruMENTAL', Anton goes straight forward in this one. Screaming his perverse lyrics out, and the music that constantly stops to begin ultra brutal again... Here it is where the victims hunt their killer and where he gets sick in his mind... Or isn't it a mental issue, and are they really coming after him... And like the last song says, this outro is the 'eXXX(c)it(e)'. Conclusion: Anton von Niekerk, a name we will hear a lot more in the future, I suppose. After making some name in the underground with Sanguinarius, he shows us he's totally back with his new project Verkrag. This "13 Victims" shows us black metal is alive and serious kicking ass in South-Africa. The album can compete with the majority of the scene today. Especially when you see Anton did everything on his own... Not only the vocals and instruments (only drums are by computer), but also artwork and recordings (great sound for a normal home computer), publicity, releasing, ... I bet Verkrag can become a big name with a label after them! In the meanwhile, you'll find the album on a lot of internetstores, or just check out the Verkrag website. 83/100 Tracklist:
More info at: www.verkrag.com & www.myspace.com/verkrag Check out the interview we did with Anton: Verkrag-interview Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites |
