NETHERLANDS rejects restraint in favor of maximum impact: shredding chops, soaring vocals, and maddening hooks. Following Ellis' mission statement of making music that is equally "light-hearted, brutal, ecstatic", NETHERLANDS crushes decades' worth of bombast into psychotropic nuggets of evil rock bliss, with nods to the dirtbag rituals of 70s heavy metal, the grandeur of 80s arena rock, and the crunch and hooks of 90s post-hardcore
NETHERLANDS was formed in 2010 in NYC by Timo Ellis(gtr / vox), with Chealsea "Thee Chuq" Wierbonski(synthbass), Josh Musto(synthbass / aux), and Damien Moffitt(drums).
NETHERLANDS have played with NAPALM DEATH, MELT BANANA, MUTOID MAN, YOB, RETOX, BLACK FLAG, EYEHATEGOD, FLIPPER, CANDIRIA, VALIENT THORR, CHILD ABUSE, MUTILATION RITES, HE WHOSE OX IS GORED, MARTIN REV, WITCH MOUNTAIN, THE DEATH SET, UNSTOPPABLE DEATH MACHINES, WHITE HILLS, MOON TOOTH, and THOUGHTCRIMES…among many others.
Lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Timo Ellis is from NYC. He's recorded and played with Yoko Ono, Cibo Matto, John Zorn, The Melvins, Gibby Haynes, Ween, Joan As Police Woman, Spacehog, and White Hills among many others, as well as put out over 25 musically widely varied solo albums as TE and under several other pseudonyms.
Today's tune "We're All Gonna Die One Day" is taken from the album "Zombie Techno". The album is a musical document of the anthropocene that dissects and critiques mankind’s devolution via its addiction to technology, the scourge of capitalism, and the plague of distraction. As the Earth’s ecosystem morphs into proverbial white blood cells tasked with ridding itself of the virus of humanity, NETHERLANDS look on in anger, grief...as well as with the last fumes of hope they can muster... and submit a turbulent, psychedelic jaunt through various sonic biomes. "Zombie Techno" is an album that sounds like the musical version of a life flashing before one’s eyes in the moments before death, a sonic apocalypse rendered in an onslaught of primal, visceral drumming, churning synth bass, guitars that oscillate between bludgeoning sludge sledgehammers and searing deathrays of shred, and the occasionally droll, but generally acidic caterwauling polemics of a man actively disassembling the machine of extinction as it consumes us all. Despite the lofty concepts and heavy premise of the album, it carries its formidable weight with the agility and anger of a punk band, the dynamics and melodic intrigue of a prog-rock opus, and a larger-than-life intensity that is as compelling as it is deeply and genuinely terrifying. This is an album that supplies new information with each repeated listen and a rare example of a record that begs to be blasted at masochistic volume as much as it deserves to be afforded the intimacy of headphones. Zombie Techno provides an intersection for high art altruism and low brow intensity that shirks genre restriction and lazy consumption, and is an antidote for the predictability and trends of heavy music in 2020. "Zombie Techno" was released June 26, 2020, enjoy!
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