PREMIERE: Netherlands Are Ushering in a New Wave of Metal-Pop

There’s a sub-sub-sub-genre of rock/metal that I’m pretty sure doesn’t have a name and I’m going to do us all a favor and refrain from naming it. The genre consists of Dio-inflected yowling over Drive Like Jehu overridden in the red propulsion. I’m thinking Big Business, Death From Above 1979, Unstoppable Death Machines, Torche… and Netherlands. Netherlands are the least known of the aforementioned and that’s because, and I don’t need to tell you this, life is profoundly unfair. Netherlands’ Timo Ellis has been bopping around NYC for over twenty years, collaborating with everyone from Cibo Matto (he, along with Sean Lennon, was in the band from 1997-2002) to John Zorn to the Melvins, and all the while making his own consistently excellent brand of punktastic choogle. Netherlands exists on the slightly more psychedelic end of the nameless genre’s spectrum, with songs about dragons and whatnot frolicking underneath a Uriah Heep rainbow. They keep it all pretty cosmic while never forgetting, no matter what some heads might tell you, the world gets boring as shit once the drums let up.

Netherlands’ newest song “Thrombosis,” that we at Noisey are delighted to premiere and offer as a download below, is a perfect example of the band’s combination of glammed out Highway Star vocals running wild and free over distorted bass chaos. The New Wave Of Not Garbage Pop Metal (yeah, see, this is why I don’t name genres) is so real.