Review by Vladimir on April 24, 2023.

It’s time to travel all the way to The Netherlands, probably for the first time ever when it comes to reviewing a band from there. The band in question is Witte Wieven, a two-member atmospheric black metal band from Tilburg, formed in 2014. The band released their debut full-length album Dwaallicht on April 14th on vinyl and digital via Babylon Doom Cult Records. 

Our opener is 'Ontsponnen Uit De Diepte', which starts off with a calm clean guitar intro before suddenly kicking off with aggressively distorted guitars and drums, all the while the calm clean guitar part is still played in the background and the clean female vocals briefly appear. Although I was expecting to hear the beautiful female vocals again throughout the rest of the song, all of a sudden, a shrieking voice is heard echoing from a distance like a banshee in the forest. The song is predominantly focusing on clean guitar parts that resonate some emotions of wandering in despair, even with the aggressive tremolo riffing and shrieking vocals. The second track 'Koorddanser' features some female vocals on the very beginning that utter a single word with an echo effect. The first half of the song is just clean guitars, slow drums and female vocals, while the second half finally includes distorted guitars, shrieking vocals and even fast drums, giving the song somewhat of a two-faced approach with each half having a separate style, being both a beauty and a beast. The album’s closure is a live track 'Met Beide Benen In Het Niets', which for a live track sounds pretty good considering the fact that I was led to believe that it was just a regular studio track all the time until I heard the applause at the end. I must say that this is a bold decision because I don’t know if any other band closed their album with a live track rather than just a regular track recorded in a studio. The songwriting is mostly clean guitar sections with distorted guitar riffs, which shift the mood to a different direction, all the while keeping a very haunted and lonely feeling throughout the entire album. On an emotional level, the album feels like a tragic story of some spirit which wanders in the forest eternally, without a single clue of its past life and yet endures its lonesome existence. The band’s name which translates to “white women” from Dutch, which are spirits of wise women, probably reflects on that concept throughout the album’s entirety since its haunting nature is carried out in the musical output. As for the sound production, the clean and distorted guitar sound are both very good and outstanding, although the shrieking female vocals could have probably been a bit louder but it’s still quite solid. 

The album is an interesting and atmospheric experience, which doesn’t really have any specific words that would define its overall nature other than “hauntingly beautiful”. The musical output was indeed incredible and deserves to be checked out, especially if you’re really into modern sounding black metal bands that are atmospheric and ambient as well. 

Rating: 8.3 out of 10