Or Not – Violence&Grace

June 17, 2024

Release date: 07.06.2024

Or Not is a special band in more than one way. One of the reasons is the fact that the band plays the pretty unique genre Symphonic Thrash Metal. Another one of those reasons is that they are ambassadors for Energy4All, a foundation that fights the battle against mitochondrial diseases. Who is this father-and-son duo that came out of nowhere with their album Violence&Grace?

Or Not

Or Not first saw the light just before the Corona crisis. Where most people around 40 fall in a midlife crisis, Or Not’s founder Dolf Blomhert decided to take things in a different direction. Having played in various metal bands before, Dolf decided it was time to put his name on some metal again. His son Daniel, who grew up to be a drummer, joined him in that project. Together they played and recorded all the parts for Violence&Grace, apart from some guest appearances from other musicians.

Symphonic Thrash Metal

I didn’t really know what I could expect from ‘symphonic thrash metal’. Turns out, if you’ve ever heard Powerwolf, it’s kinda in the same boathouse. Not quite similar, but more in the same direction. There are plenty of thrash metal riffs and really fast double bass drum parts. But there’s also more than enough room for head-banging, slower riffs, and shout-along parts in the chorus. All dosed with a hefty amount of strings and other orchestrations.

The symphonic parts on this album sound really epic. No wonder, if you learn (from their website, that is), that the main orchestrator for this record was Carsten Altena, who is one of the core members of The Monolith Deathcult. The same goes for the production of this album; the quality is as well as you would expect from a band with a really big, record-label-backed, budget. Hans Pieters was the master of that, and he is known to be the producer for After Forever, Gorefest, and Epica, to name a few. You can really hear Or Not spared no expense to get the best they had to offer on the record. And it certainly paid off.

Violence&Grace

Violence&Grace spans just over 1 hour and 30 minutes, totaling 16 tracks. That’s A LOT for a debut album, I have to say. So much even, that I’m not going to discuss every track in this review. There aren’t even any filler tracks on the album; the first track and the last track are a prelude and an outro for the album. Not that I’m complaining; the opposite, really.

Violence&Grace opens with the intro tunes of Cyberia, which really feels like the intro tape for a symphonic or progressive metal band. When Violence&Grace kicks in with the words ‘and then there was chaos, let all hell break loose’ we get the idea of what Or Not does with symphonic thrash metal. And if you hear the chorus for this track, you get why I mentioned Powerwolf as a reference. Plenty of fast solos in the style of Dragonforce are spread throughout the track as well. What I really like is that this track doesn’t get predictable, without getting too crowded or too chaotic (even though Dolf shouts ‘show me chaos’ towards the break). That’s just good songwriting. Violence&Grace is really great debut track, no wonder this band has gained 4000 monthly listeners on Spotify.

With Infradread, we get a bit of Rammstein-like influences. Groovy riffs, with a bit of Metallica inspired vocals. Again, very easy to scream along and party along with Or Not. And another great track follows with ‘The War Inside My Head’. The band decided to make a video for this track as well. Style-wise, it might be a little more toward, for instance, the fast riffs of Megadeth. I really have to comment Dolf for his vocal parts on the album here; it’s really powerful and clean. The vocal harmonies on this track bring that extra layer and attention to detail that takes this album to another level.

An album of this length usually has at least one ballad. In this case, Ceramic Skin fits that box. It’s also another moment for Dolf to display his impressive vocal skills. He has that 90’s sound, but strong and with good pitch, even though it’s not an easy track to sing. Ceramic Skin is a bit of a power-ballad, with clean melodies and even more room for the orchestral parts. The lyrics complement the melancholic feel of the music really well ‘Nobody can touch me, nobody can hurt my ceramic skin, but that’s not how I used to be, that’s not how I want to be’ gets your right in the feels.

Dolf had plenty of time to write the most epic parts for this album, and I’m already really curious to see what he comes up with for the next album. To just highlight one more of these tracks, How It Ends is a epic piece just over 8 minutes, consisting of some of the fasted riffs (and double bass parts), tapping solos, and many epic parts. It’s basically one long story, put to music. Samples, gang vocals, How It Ends has it all. If the album would have ended with this track, I would have been a happy camper. But it gets even better, ‘cause there are more tracks to come. For instance, just listen to the intro for Dark Wave. Man, that’s epic.

Final Thoughts

It’s really hard for me not to be really positive about this album, but it’s just really, really good. My maybe ONLY negative thing about the album is that in some of the parts the orchestral parts are a little too loud in the mix, and too much on the forefront. The whole album is just one big, happy celebration of heavy music, sounding epic like this band has been playing the giant stages of the world for ages. And when I say band, remember this is just a father and his son, recording and creating this whole thing. It’s hard for me to choose a favorite track, ‘cause there really are many of them. The title track Violence&Grace is certainly one of them, so if you only listen to one track, at least listen to that one!