Nine Circles

Receiving the Evcharist is our weekly feature where we pair choice albums with our favorite libations.  Drink from the cup of heresy. This week’s offering: Verwoed’s De Val and Charles Shaw Pinot Noir.

The Metal: Verwoed’s De Val

Hey look at that, we’re back on Dutch black metal again.  The Netherlands has been a force to be reckoned with this year when it comes to stellar releases, and carrying on this streak is Verwoed’s first full-length album De Val.  At first glance, you might not even recognize De Val as being from the Utrecht scene; the rolling drum patterns and tense, ringing guitar lines recall more of Icelandic black metal than the romanticism of Nusquama or the experimentalism of Laster.  Yet lurking under the menacing surface are precisely these connections to the core of what makes Dutch black metal great.  The warbly effect-laden guitar that caps off the opening title track plays perfect counterpoint to the more straight-ahead venom of the rest of the song, and the melodies that call through the midsection of “De Kwelling van het Bestaan” are a surprising bit of beauty among the darkness.  Verwoed manage to draw from many influences in modern black metal and come away with something that recalls the best of all of them.

The Booze: Charles Shaw Pinot Noir

Well, as of this writing, my day has been spent running around since I got up this morning, so in lieu of a trip to the liquor store for something fancy, we’re going to get real and reach for a good old fashioned pantry staple, though at the very least a step above the Three Buck Chuck (as it was known in my house) that my parents were fond of keeping handy.  The extra dollar in the price tag on this bottle goes towards procuring the 100% organic ingredients that go into this Pinot Noir, and quite honestly, it shows.  This isn’t just a good wine for the price, this is good wine.  Granted, I don’t tend to get many fancy bottles of wine for myself (I leave that to other people to buy for me), but this has pretty much everything I want from a wine: rich fruitiness with hints of cherry and strawberry, good tartness, a pleasing earthy finish, and a dry body.   If you’re trying to ball on a budget, you could do a lot worse than Charles Shaw.

Cheers, and be good to each other,

– Vincent