"Talk about business as usual and I had to smile. Putting together the 1st review list of the year 2 names stuck out, both of them prolific artists who we will probably get stacks more albums from over the course of 2021. On the one hand it’s Rogga Johansson with one of his many acts Stass. It would be easy to refer to him as delivering the meat and turnips of SweDeath which knows no limits but he did catch us out a little with Furnace last year. Then we have this fellow, Maurice de Jong, who is not quite as simple to sum up but an artist with equally as many creative paths and one who works in blackened noise as much as anything else. Yes, you are probably thinking it too but just how interesting would it be if the 2 of them combined forces and created a musical act between them? Well stranger things have happened.
Anyway, enough prevaricating and let’s get to Mories latest project Schemer Heer. Apparently, it means Twilight Lord and said to have contrasts to Vetus Supulcrum and recorded “exclusively with a guitar synth (MEL 9) and using orchestral percussion” the interesting thing here for those obsessed by genre is that as far as I am concerned descriptors of black metal and dungeon synth here are pretty much invalid. Basically, this is classical music more than anything else and the 8 compact tracks work as movements within the mainframe each telling a part of a story that is very filmic in execution."
"On a quiet Wednesday afternoon in a peaceful but boring Dutch little town, the ground suddenly shakes with a mighty roar. The Earth splits open and from the depths deep within rises a terrifying creature. The sky turns red, birds fall dead from the sky and even one look at the horrifying face of the Lovecraftian demon will make you go mad. Mad with boredom.
Schemer Heer is a new dungeon synth project by Maurice de Jong, the man behind the black metal/noise band Gnaw Their Tongues. Now I have to admit, I am not very familiar with dungeon synth. My experience with the genre is mostly with artists like Offermose, Angst Sessions and Den Sorte Dod which are of a more electronic nature while Schemer Heer is orchestral and very, very bombastic. From the first until the last second your ears get blasted with army-like percussion, swirling synths and choir chanting. While this does evoke an image of a Lovecraftian apocalypse, it’s just too much of the same."