Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone is as much a call to action as it is a supremely bold statement in a genre marred by ugliness over the decades.

Release date: October 10, 2025 | Church Road Records | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp

One of many great things about this ‘job’ or having a general interest in musical exploration that goes beyond trying whatever slop is skullfucked into you by some weirdo AI-powered, war crime-supporting algorithm is finding bands who have fought well past their potentially awkward early years, garnered tons of fans already, and you just come across them several projects deep. Such is the case with me and Terzij de Horde – seeing their newest single come out and giving it a try because Church Road Records were attached (and they usually sign newer, scrappy, upcoming acts) was how I found this black metal band that’s been at it in one form or another for almost two decades.

That’s a lot of time to hone down your sound and methodology, and while I’m blissfully unaware of that growth process – which as we know sometimes is a good thing – we’re seeing the fruits of it with Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone. From the scenic Netherlands, the black metal they form appears to be contradictory to that origin, but everywhere struggles. It doesn’t matter how good your cities and countryside look, struggle is inherent to the human experience in varying waves and intensities. Terzij de Horde are preoccupied with conquering it.

‘Can our communal breath Nourish or petrify Our horizons of meaning?

‘Look inward, crawl out, perform As they sieve through our ashes And raise them towards the sun‘

Please be aware of very quick, flash-like cuts used throughout this video if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing.

The name Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone has an allure to it, one that shatters the specter of individualism that so much of Western society and culture is built on, but it’s not easy. Like many of us, Terzij de Horde struggle and so they’ve immortalized this struggle through the iterative berating of black metal’s sonic maul. This is a genre that’s so clearly defined as music and sound, and yet its context and themes can wholly transform it. You’ve heard this music before, yes, but not quite like this.

“A Hammer To The Great Matter Of Birth And Death” speaks of failure and subsummation to a greater threat, referring to exclusion and avoidance and its opposition to outreach and guidance, and how a golden pavilion is ‘circled by hatred and separation‘. Set to the tones of ripping black metal, the sense is immediate that this is a long-fought battle, with these more negative feelings and sensibilities coating our existence in darkness:

‘Haunting all pasts Tainting all futures The poison web Of fear and regret The teeth of traps Set in inner worlds’

It’s one of many powerful moments on Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone. “The All-Consuming Work Of The Soul’s Foreclosing” is similarly caustic and fervent, exploding with fastidious melody and finesse as the band moves further away from black metal standards. For as intense as their instrumentation is, there’s still a nuance to it that gives it life, but the soul (no pun intended, promise) is, perhaps surprisingly, in the lyrics for me. “Justice Is Not Enough To Leave The House Of Modernity” is an especially fiery moment of hope. Depicting a metaphorical house of fear, death, pain, and loss, a ‘trapping of all life‘, you can’t help but think of the famous Audre Lorde work that refers to the master’s house and how the master’s tools alone cannot dismantle it. Then you get to the lyrics that say ‘I have taken up the master’s tools/And it might not be enough‘, showing the band not only did their homework, but wished to convey a similar point that only total destruction will open the way to greater meaning. Here, Terzij de Horde‘s black metal screed can be seen as nothing but a fierce message of unity and purpose.

Similar quick cuts, edits, and flashes are in this whole video too – be careful.

Each song, mentioned here explicitly or not, has a very specific thing to convey. Some of it is out of my depth to be honest, but packed with beautiful prose all the same, impassioned across the board. This is a good time to mention that Terzij de Horde loosely translates from Dutch as ‘set apart/aside from the horde’, a clear, emblazoned thesis statement that functions as a double entendre: with their skills and intentions, they are set apart from their peers in extreme metal, convincingly and impressively so; and they seek to separate from the majority of people who, ironically, conform like many others by succumbing to individualism and severing the links to community and enlightenment. You can think as deeply or shallowly about it as you wish, but the fact of the matter is the band themselves make it clear where they stand on the house of modernity, and it certainly isn’t within it.

Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone is a missive for the times. I feel like a broken record saying that times are bad, and there aren’t many people that understand that more than our artists that house empathy within for others like and unlike themselves. This is a massive album by a massive band, capable of moving the stars at will to tell a story as complicated as our own. Terzij de Horde implicitly ask a lot of things of us, to ponder, to consider, but one of their most arresting questions is explicit and upfront in “Each Breath A Flame” before you’re taken by waves of black metal force: ‘Do we dare to crawl out of a history of cowardice, out of shadowed towers at supremacy’s heart?‘

Band photo by Void Revelations