METALTALK • OCTOBER 2021
Vetrar Draugurinn
Dutch doomsters Vetrar Draugurinn are closer in spirit to their Icelandic name than their warmer homeland, creating music full of heavy, threatening overtones but littered with atmospheric melodies. Formed by ex Stream Of Passion man Eric Hazebroek and featuring current Autumn singer Marjan Welman on lead vocals, they have just released their independently funded sophomore album The Night Sky. It’s a beautifully crafted follow up to their debut Hinterlands, an album full of heavy, memorable riffs, slow atmospheric build-ups and silky smooth melodic vocals, which take it into another league altogether; traditional Doom Metal this is not. Songs like The Lonely and The Observer captivate but never quite let you know exactly where they’re going to go. When the band edge into epic territory on the brooding tribute to love which is Our Lady Of Perpetual Emptiness, or the towering soundscape of Reynisfjara, it feels like they’ve come home.
MetalTalk’s Ian Sutherland caught up with Eric and Marjan to find out more about Vetrar Draugurinn and The Night Sky. MetalTalk: Thanks for talking to us. For anyone new to the band, can you say how you got together? Eric: The actual start of the band was back in 2014. I played the guitar in Stream of Passion and had just put my band, The Saturnine, to rest. I came up with the idea to start a new project, more of a solo thing, with music that I couldn’t offer to SoP.
Dutch atmospheric doomsters Vetrar Draugurinn release their tribute to the night sky 42
I listen to many different artists and styles, and many people know that my love for the more sombre and dark music is the most prominent. So I started writing songs and looking around for whom of my friends in the music business I could ask for their skills to add to this idea. I made a selection based on skills and style, but also personality. I wanted to gather a group of people that were open to the vision and could relate to the main subject of the music. Easy going was also a criteria. When early in 2016, Stream of Passion decided to call it a day, I called the group of people that formed Vetrar Draugurinn on the way home from the SoP meeting to ask them if they were up for transforming the project into a full-blown band. And so it happened that this unlikely group of Dutch musicians moved forward under an Icelandic name. Marjan: Well, what Eric said, of course! It started as a side project for Eric, and he rang me up asking me if I would be interested in singing some songs for
