Some bands and their releases have a strange storyline, and such strange storylines certainly include Belgian quartet Black Tish and their two albums, in this particular case, its second Viral Apocalypse.
The story goes something like this – Black Tish was formed in 1988 in the Brussels area. Soon after formation, the band started mixing live instruments with programmed music and sampling, making them one of the earliest industrial (post-)metal acts. However, due to the evolving tastes of the band members, they only agreed on a finished product ten years later in 1998, which due to circumstances was released in 2023, calling the album Throbbing Flip Out.
At the same time as the release of Black Tish’s 2nd album, Viral Apocalypse, which came about after a 20-year break.
Basically, Bob Coecke and his cohorts are fans of seemingly two quite disparate musical genres – ‘musique concrete’ (concrete music), belonging to modern classical music, as one of the earliest uses of electronics in music dating back to the 1940s. In musique concrete various raw pieces of natural sounds are then manipulated and collated together.
Black Tish though applies this concept to heavy metal and stoner rock for a specific amalgam that seems to exist only in the minds of Coecke (guitar and vocals), Axel Claeys (bass), Ronny Damoiseau (keyboards), and Tim Trenson (guitar).
On Viral Apocalypse, it turns out to be an exploding combination that will delight many fans of all things heavy.
