Indeed, Cools has outdone himself in both aesthetics with Oerheks' full-length debut, De Stroom. With cover artwork and album layout inspired by classical music and soundtrack LPs from the '70s, '80s, and '90s - the ensemble created by visual artist Pierre Perichaud, photographer Davy Prenen, and layout wizard Dan Fried, each masterminds in their respective fields - evinces a sort of modernist ruralism, so, too, can such be felt in the sonics of De Stroom. Impossibly, beautifully ethereal and ragingly violent simultaneously, Oerheks issue forth a tempest of gleaming, glittering obsidian whose reflections drift deeply into the beyond - and into the soul. Every strum of the guitar, each snare hit, each desperate howl...all swirl together into an eternally ebbing landscape that's psychically and even physically tied to its thematic focus. This is a marriage of form and content, thought and deed - of ascendent atmosphere and pushed-to-the-brink physicality, cresting and crashing with pathos and portent.
Suitably epic, the four-song / 41-minute De Stroom is inspired by water and its impact on the landscape of Cagghenvinna, the Demer valley, and the Hageland region. It's a saga about ancient seas, rain and floods, the ever-evolving meanders of the Demer and the everlasting journey from source to flood.