This Saturday, the King Dude and The Ruins of Beverast autumn tour has its third date at the Gerb de Noel in Leiden. Since its still the first half, the third band on the bill is (D O L C H); the last five shows feature Caronte instead, whilst the three before that include both. For the Leiden date, a special guest has been announced in the form of Dutch quartet The Spirit Cabinet.

Tickets for the event cost 19.50€ and can be acquired via ticketmaster. More information available at this location. Below, we provide a quick look at each of the four artists.

 

King Dude is probably the most well known name on the bill. Part of the Ván family since 2012’s reissue of «Love», the album which gave us the loveliest of lullabies in the form of «Lucifer Is The Light Of The World». The most recent release, feature above, is «Sex», perhaps the most straight-up rock ‘n roll King Dude record so far, with all the nuances in form that such an idea entails. This has caused him to tour extensively in the full band format, which is what will happen this Saturday.

If there’s a band out there that can ever be the symbol of Ván, it’s The Ruins Of Beverast. After all, their fantastic debut full-length «Unlock The Shrine» was the first ever release of the German label. In fact, with the exception of their first demo in 2003 and the «Gott in uns» split in 2007, every single release by Alexander von Meilenwald‘s brainchild came with the Ván seal.

It is precisely their most recent album, the brilliant «Exuvia», that gives us the biggest reason to be excited for Saturday. The next step in the unpredictable, yet coherent, path of one of black metal’s most creative minds is what we would call progressive black metal. Not because it mixes those annoying “prog metal” clichés with black metal, such foulness is obviously absent from «Exuvia», but because it structures what are essentially black metal textures in the same brilliant way that Pink Floyd used to do to rock – it’s not for nothing that they recently covered «Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun». It’s a subtle record, less immediate than «Blood Vaults» in the same way the 2013 LP was less immediate than «Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Elite». How it all translates into a stage is something we are not sure, although judging by the way everything else in their catalogue was flawlessly transcribed to a live setting before, we couldn’t have higher hopes.

( D O L C H ) have been putting out interesting releases of atmospheric and ritualistic black metal for the past few years. However, they are yet to release a proper full-length. Their most recent offerings were the «An Den Mond» EP from a few months ago and last year’s split with King Dude. Nevertheless, it is still the first two demos, compiled below, to whom we return again and again.

Finally, there’s The Spirit Cabinet. The concept here is very simple. Imagine if Urfaust‘s IX decided to drop the intoxicated atmospheric black metal, traded the phonetic signing for some actual lyrics and went all Mercyful Fate worship on all our asses. Actually, there’s no need to imagine it, he really did that, going by Snake McRuffkin for the occasion. It happened in 2015 when he got together with current and former members of dutch black and doom metal acts, Cirith Gorgor and Hooded Priest respectively, to form The Spirit Cabinet. The result and so far only release of the band is the rather pleasant «Hystero Epileptic Possessed», to which you can listen below.