Jacht der Mysteriën will mark the fourth time I have written about Fluisteraars for this site, and for good reason; they are the band that introduced me to the wider world of the Dutch black metal scene, a constant source of surprising and eclectic artists, and yet even among their peers the duo have managed to stay at the forefront of creating boundary-pushing black metal. After venturing everywhere from dark ambient to improvised noise rock and back again, the band’s sixth full-length album sees them echoing the sound of their earliest days; and yet, while the music itself may have a familiar ring to it, Jacht der Mysteriën is filtered, quite literally in some ways, through the band’s unerringly bold vision for what black metal could be.

Recorded as a live band featuring an expanded lineup for the first time on an album and with each song captured in a single take, Jacht der Mysteriën marks Fluisteraars’ return to the long-form, hypnotic black metal that caught my attention in the first place. With the shortest of the three compositions presented here clocking in at almost eleven minutes, this is music meant to take you on a journey, as all of Fluisteraars’ music is, but on this release the journey is one much less romantic than the band has presented in the past. Inspired by “local legends, mysterious lights in the woods, and close observation of their immediate surroundings,” the spiraling repetition of guitar, bass, and drums is interspersed with crawling dark ambient passages and eerie wailing noise, drawing the listener into a ghostly world where past blends with present, time is a veil to be parted, and nothing is quite as it first may seem. This atmosphere is granted further life through the band’s decision to reamp the entire album through an abandoned water tower, which gives a lush reverberation and ghostly presence to the songs.

Normally in a review I try to refrain from referring to promotional text directly, so as to not seem lazy at my hobby, but in the case of Jacht der Mysteriën I don’t think I could sum the album up more accurately than it was presented to me: immersive, urgent, and elusive. This is genuinely an album where every time I have listened to it, I have picked up on more small details that I missed before, yet the mystique remains such that I am pulled back in to try and unravel more and more. It captivates me in the same way that folk horror movies captivate me, a psychedelic puzzle to be examined with curiosity and reverence, gleaning a sense of inner meaning from within the maelstrom.

— Vincent

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Jacht der Mysteriën will be available September 11 through Eisenwald. For more information on Fluisteraars, visit the band’s Facebook page.