Maurice de Jong remains a man who delights in unleashing the full force of his musicality upon our damned souls. Only a few weeks ago he released the deeply unsettling Temple Mist through De Pankraker, yet another addition to his ever-growing catalogue of sonic affliction. Of course, we know him from Gnaw Their Tongues, his countless other disruptive projects, and the now almost legendary split with Alkerdeel. The list simply never ends, as if his creative well is incapable of running dry.
With Hagetisse, he has now reached his eighth album under this moniker. A work that catapults us back to the ’90s with a kind of brutal inevitability, a period to which many bands have returned in recent years, instinctively searching for the primal flame of the genre. But while others merely chase nostalgia, Maurice de Jong does more than recreate the atmosphere: he revives it, summoning the same coldness, darkness, and uncompromising claustrophobia that made the second wave so distinctive.
As a result, Hagetisse feels less like a retro exercise and more like a genuine re-immersion: a return to a time when Black Metal was raw, dangerous, and untouched. Once again, Maurice proves not only that he is a master of extremity, but also a musician who understands exactly what the scene needs, even if that means confronting it with its own origins.
Where his previous album The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin ventured clearly into more experimental territory, this new work marks a return to a more traditional approach. No twisting detours, no shapeshifting diversions, just uncompromising second-wave Black Metal, scraping open the veins with its raw, unfiltered edge. It feels as though Maurice deliberately takes a step back, not to repeat what has already been done, but to let the essence burn anew.
We are thrown back to the basics: abrasive, icy, and unpolished. No unnecessary ornamentation, no suffocating layers of experimentation, only pure, straightforward darkness, exactly as it was meant to be. A sound that feels immediately familiar yet unmistakably his: intense, threatening, and tinged with a sense of sacred despair that only he can conjure with such conviction.
Ward of Void Wanderer clearly has a keen sense for what fits his label, and this new Hagetisse album lies firmly within the terrain where Void Wanderer prefers to roam. Unfortunately, it is available only on tape for now; this album would undoubtedly shine on vinyl, if only for the hypnotising cover
85/100
Void Wanderer Productions:
Bandcamp
Instagram
Facebook
Void Wanderer Productions Website