ProStudioMasters.com

The contemporary Belgian heavy music scene keeps spawning awesome bands, and Briqueville – thespaces in between the letters are part of their moniker – are among the most intriguing and compelling of them. The meditative heaviness of their sound and the careful engineering of the visual aspects of their mesmerizing live-performance rituals are awe-inspiring and challenging in equal measure. After 2017's dazzling instrumental opus II, the Flemish 5-piece finally return with their 3rd studio album, one of the first real pandemic-albums to be released on Pelagic. The band members had to finish the album in separation, which worked out better than they had initially expected: the forced distance allowed them to take distance not only to each other, but also towards their own song material. Some pieces grew larger than originally intended, others were stripped down to the essentials and reinvented. The end result is a staggering album that is sophisticated and smothering at the same time, made up of altogethershorter songs as compared to the previous release, and there is a more prominent focus on those tasty electronics,which have always been an integral part of Briqueville's sound. The album is also the first one with analbum title: Quelle means "source" in German, and "which" in French. "We strongly feel that this record keeps all the ingredients of previous records and explores them further than we ever did before. The theme of a 'source', and the 'which' linking it reflexively to our previous album artwork gave us the feeling that we stayed true to our original concept, music, artwork and clips. Water and sand as a source of life and death. How an isolated soul deals with these elements." - Briqueville