About three years ago I wrote about In One of These, I Am Your Enemy, a dense album that dealt with the perception of reality and how the choices we make are both influenced by others and driven by our own autonomy. It haunted me, its themes staying so close it managed to rank very high in my 2022 AOTY list. Now, Terzij de Horde returns with Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone (hereafter abbreviated to Our Breath…), an album that screams to be heard, blistering with rage and thunder.

For context, Our Breath… is a line taken from the writings of Hartmut Rosa, a German sociologist and political scientist known for his writings on the theory of resonance and social acceleration. The theory deals with how social conditions can either foster or hinder successful relationships. Because our current world has accelerated to the point where we are geared to do things in as short as time as possible (social acceleration), we are under constant pressure to accelerate, to maintain the status quo, to continually improve ourselves. This can lead to burnout, meaning our resources need to be preserved – ultimately we must choose between ourselves and what we have built or fostering new relationships and seeking new experiences. Given how deeply alienated many of us have become, Our Breath… comes at a time where we are stifling underneath a pressure cooker, looking for a way to break through the tedium of bad news and chaos.

Our Breath… succeeds in that regard, starting with resounding chaos and cacophony that immediately tells you Terzij de Horde are not here to fuck around. “Raise Them Towards the Sun” takes absolutely no prisoners, an onslaught of fury that makes you take notice of what they are doing. This song is a testament to current events, telling the listener things are bad everywhere, and we cannot be stifled underneath the weight of it all.

This isn’t In One of These, I Am Your Enemy – we have come out of Plato’s cave, reflective and thinking of what we are going to do next, only to see everything outside is on fire. “The Shadow of Prefiguation” starts urgently, filled with rhythms and syncopations that cut through the litany of chaotic guitars. The song blisters, stimulation overload; all you can do is listen, mesmerized by the surrounding chaos, and smile. The world may be on fire, but there are people who understand and are going through the same things. The music kicks up during the last part, and there’s some joy to be found. When vocalist Joost Vervoort screams “They will never forget us again!” you feel it in your bones – you cannot sit in your pain and grief all the time; there’s a future to look forward to and we must work for that future.

On the second half, Our Breath… “slows”, its music more reflective and melodic. While retaining its anger and ferocity it becomes calmer, letting it steep before kicking into high gear. We are allowed to be angry, but we cannot let it consume us. However, we must also not stifle it – we are allowed to feel things in the moment, and we must sit with it before we do anything. Then, the aptly titled “The All-Consuming Work of the Soul’s Foreclosing” starts and all that reflection is gone. The vitriol has returned, the anger no longer simmering. We are watching, in real time, as things become obsolete, as our lives are become instruments in destruction, and as we have stopped listening because we can no longer keep up. We are so rooted in our fear that we can no longer leave the mental house we have built, even though we must.

Finally, there’s “Discarding All Adornments”, a track that steps back from the fury, returning to that earlier reflective theme first seen on “A Hammer to the Great Matter of Birth and Death”. This final track is more rooted in hardcore, reminding me of Ithaca’s “Fluorescent”, albeit with less of a progressive flair. Here, the band employs more melody, indicating a sense of calm amidst the chaos, the fire warm instead of blazing hot. It’s a surprising end to an album that spoke so much, that was so organically angry, that for it to feature a soft, soothing monologue about accepting our end when it comes is almost too much to bear. It strikes hope amidst the fear, the pain, and the what-ifs. We might be individuals, living our lives, but we also need community, connection, and a moment to breathe. We cannot let ourselves fall into the current despair; everything eventually comes to an end.

I am not sure why Our Breath… struck me in the way it did. Perhaps it’s because of the way things have felt recently, of how it feels we are becoming more and more alienated in the pursuit of carving a space in this life. Perhaps it’s because we have become so separated by what is happening that we can no longer find a way to connect with others. We have become polarized and desensitized to what is happening outside our bubble, and many of us wear blinders so we can become detached from what’s happening outside our door. To me, Our Breath… is a highly personal record, one that screams to be heard among the buzz of world events, and one that is required listening for the foreseeable future. May it continue to haunt me for the rest of the year.

–Hera

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Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone is available October 10 on Fiadh Productions. For more information on Terji de Horde, visit their official Facebook and Instagram.