Pro Patria &#8211; SIDE-LINE

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

Signal Aout 42 back with all new single: ‘Memories’

Bernard - Side-Line Staff — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 14:06:34 +0000

Belgian industrial-electro pioneers, Signal Aout 42, have unveiled their latest single, “Memories”. This track, the third single from their forthcoming album “Ex-Voto”, is now available via the Out Of Line Music label. Fans can anticipate the album’s release on 13th October.

Jacky Meurisse, reflecting on “Memories”, shared, “It’s a homage to those who have passed away but have left an indelible mark on me, shaping the person I’ve become.”

“Ex-Voto” boasts 12 tracks and will be accessible both as a double LP and on CD. Additionally, a fresh T-shirt design will accompany the album.

Tracing back to 1981, Signal Aout 42 was originally conceived as Signal, a casual live improvisation endeavour by school friends Jacky Meurisse, Damien Vandamme, and Luc Vandamme. However, due to a naming clash with a popular local toothpaste brand, they opted for Signal Aout 42. This name references the launch date of the German Wehrmacht’s propaganda magazine, Signal. Despite some misconceptions linking the band to far-right ideologies because of this association, Meurisse has firmly clarified that such assumptions are unfounded. Following a ten-year break, the band re-emerged in the late 2000s.

Discography:

Pro Patria – 1989
Contrast – 1990
Conviction – 1993
Transformation – 2007
Vae Victis – 2010
Inspiration – 2013
Insurrection – 2019

Enjoy their new single below.

Pro Patria put on hold, Peter V. starts new project under his own name with first new release ‘Metropolis’

Bernard - Side-Line Staff — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 14:05:33 +0000

The Belgian oldschool EBM act Pro Patria is put on hold. In a message to his Bandcamp followers Peter V. (aka PVC) says that “the past year has been difficult for me from a creative point of view. I love making music, but I felt increasingly restrained by the narrow boundaries that EBM allows (…) therefore, Pro Patria will be put on hold for some time, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t be publishing anything anymore.”

Peter V. presents in the same mail a new release, which he will simply publish under his own name (Peter V): “Metropolis”. The reason for this release is very simple, Peter has been dreaming about making a contemporary music score for the 1927 expressionist film by Fritz Lang. The first part of it, “Intro – Schicht – Die Stadt der Arbeiter “, is out now.

He will add the consecutive parts as he finishes them, and in the end he will publish the full movie with his score. Here’s the first part.

Metropolis by Peter V

Pro Patria announce all new album ‘Piercing Through the Armour’

Bernard - Side-Line Staff — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 13:26:44 +0000

(Photo’s by Patrice Hoerner, Luc Luyten and Karim Hamid) After the split with their record label Insane Records, Pro Patria will now self-release their upcoming sixth full CD “Piercing Through the Armour” later this summer. Whereas their 2021 album “Godless” was bone-hard, the new album will be more experimental, offering a variety of ways to explore new boundaries to the band’s classic EBM style. No official release date is known as of yet for “Piercing Through the Armour”, but the album should be finished by late August or September and made available via the band’s Bandcamp page.

Photo by Luc Luyten

Photo by Patrice Hoerner

A track taken from their latest album “Godless”, called “Razorblade”, could be heard on our most recent free charity compilation “Face The beat: Session 7”.

Peter: “Although the hard beats certainly won’t be missing, the approach becomes more personal, even intimate at times, through which we try to establish a stronger link with the listener.”

Videos for two tracks of the new album have already been released on YouTube: “Story of a Boy” and “Get Out of the Light”. The former may come as a surprise to many Pro Patria fans as it’s completely different from their previous work.

Peter: “It highlights our desire to look beyond the narrow boundaries of traditional EBM and to express ourselves more artistically, such as with our acoustic album “Naked EBM”. The song was specifically created to convey a strong message about male victims of domestic violence who deserve more attention. In “Get Out of the Light”, on the other hand, fans will recognize a more typical Pro Patria track with its explosive and catchy chorus.”

About Pro Patria

Pro Patria was founded in 1988 and after a number of successful demos (we still have those in the Side-Line archives and they were brilliant) they published their first album “Quod Erat Demonstrandum” in 1997.

The bankruptcy of their record label and personal reasons forced them to withdraw from the scene shortly afterwards, but in 2017 they returned at the Familientreffen festival and since then they’ve published 4 full albums and they’ve performed at various festivals, most notably the W-Festival in 2018 and Dark Balloon in 2019.

Stairway Maze – Decision Fatigue (Album – ScentAir Records)

Inferno Sound Diaries — Sun, 26 Jun 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Genre/Influences: Electro-Pop, EBM, Cinematic, Tribal.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: Denis Tverdokhleb this released the third full length album of his Stairway Maze sonic brainchild. After two albums released by Aliens Production, the new opus has been released in his homeland, Russia, by ScentAir Records.

Content: After the great “Kelevra”-album Stairway Maze released a surprising work on which he collaborated with multiple guest artists. The main evolution is the addition of vocals, although some songs are still instrumental edits. It creates a diversified work which moves from Dark-Electro-Pop to EBM but also from Industrial/Tribal to the familiar Cinematic style. Human Vault, Martin Rudefelt (Cryo), Ryby (Disharmony), Bettina Bormann (Oberer Totpunkt), Peter Vercauteren (Pro Patria), Michael Roeder (A Spell Inside) and Emma Barson (Promenade Cinéma) contributed by vocals to this work.

+ + + : This new opus stands for a major evolution in this project’s history. I regretted there were no vocals featured on the previous album and “DecisionFatigue” brings a nice -and sometimes surprising selection of vocalists. It creates a varied work mixing different styles together. I’m totally convinced by the Dark-Pop approach on “The Final stand” featuring Martin Rudefelt which sounds a bit like Skinny Puppy going Electro-Pop like. I also recommend “Invisible Threat” featuring Peter V. and “Flames” featuring Ryby, both cuts sounding as harsh EBM. There also is “Conspiracy” featuring Michael Roeder which is a refined Electro-Pop song. But the absolute masterpiece is “Gaia’s Mantra” featuring Bettina Bormann on a Tribal-Industrial song with a true uplifting effect.

– – – : I can’t say there are songs to throw away but the final track “Neon Eyes” featuring Emma Barson sounds totally different from the rest and is a a bit like an antithesis to the rest of the work.

Conclusion: Stairway Maze remains a great and intelligent Electro format. It’s also surprising to see this kind of artist being released on ScentAir Records which definitely enlarges the sonic horizon of the label.

Best songs: “Gaia’s Mantra”, “The Final Stand”, “Flames”, “Invisible Threat”, “Conspiracy”.

Rate: 8½.

Artist: www.facebook.com/iamstairwaymaze

Label: www.scent-air.com / www.facebook.com/ScentairRecords

About Stairway Maze

Stairway Maze is the solo project of Denis Tverdokhleb, a musician from Petrozavodsk in the Russian region of Karelia. He mixes IDM, ambient, EBM and cinematic music.

Aliens Production released the first two Stairway Maze albums, among them “Kelevra” in 2019. Tverdokhleb discussed that record with Side-Line in “‘Click Interview’ with Stairway Maze: ‘What Is A Tower Block If Not A Stairway Maze?’”.

“Decision Fatigue”, the third album and the record reviewed here, was released on 18 February 2022 on the Russian label ScentAir Records and holds ten tracks. The Bandcamp track titles credit Bettina Bormann of Oberer Totpunkt on “Gaia’s Mantra” and Martin Rudefelt of Cryo on “The Final Stand”.

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

Pro Patria – Godless (Album – Insane Records)

Inferno Sound Diaries — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 20:00:00 +0000

Genre/Influences: EBM.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: Peter Vercauteren (PVC) set up Pro Patria in 1988. The Belgian EBM project came back to life a few years ago and started releasing new material. The band now joined hands together with Insane Records to unleash the newest opus “Godless”.

Content: I’ve always linked Pro Patria with EBM in the purest Belgian tradition; Front 242 was never far away in sound and image. “Godless” sounds like a project reinventing itself or at least exploring ‘new’ paths. The work sounds harsher, darker and more elaborated. The songs are more into a Dark-EBM approach and are often reflecting a kind of rage, which you can also notice in the production of the vocals. The first part of the album stands for the renewed approach of the band and features a few great EBM cuts. Some songs in the second part are more into some experimentalism.

+ + + : “Godless” features 14 songs and that’s an interesting amount to realize the evolution and progression of Pro Patria. Especially the debut tracks took me by surprise; aggressive sequences, heavy sound treatments and elaborated structures stand for the well-crafted production. The enraged vocals totally fit the menacing mood hanging over the work. It’s symbolized by great songs like “War! (Till The Day We Die)”, “Tomorrow”, “The Power Is Mine” and “Razorblade”. Globally speaking Pro Patria has evolved in sound and influences, leaving the Front 242 influence to reach a darker EBM style.

– – – : A few tracks from the second half of the album left me more skeptical. Songs like “Angel” and “The End” are more into some Experimental style and can’t totally convince.

Conclusion: Pro Patria remains an interesting ambassador of the Belgian Electro scene, the new work revealing a band in progression.

Best songs: “War! (Till The Day We Die)”, “Tomorrow”, “The Power Is Mine”, “Razorblade”, “Godless”, “Limits To Madness”.

Rate: (7½).

Artist: http://propatria.be / www.facebook.com/propatriaband

Label: http://insane-records.com / www.facebook.com/InsaneRecordsEU Read the news on ‘Godless’.

Godless by Pro Patria

About Pro Patria

Pro Patria is the Belgian EBM project of Peter Vercauteren. Following “Godless” in 2021, the band self-released the album “Piercing Through The Armour” in 2022. Later that year Side-Line reported that Pro Patria was put on hold, with Vercauteren starting a new solo project under his own name and releasing “Metropolis” as its first track.

Italo-Belgian cult EBM project Pro Patria joins Insane Records label and releases ‘Godless’ LP

Bernard - Side-Line Staff — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 15:40:21 +0000

To be released on February 24, International EBM-day that is, is the new LP by the Italo-Belgian EBM project Pro Patria. The new LP “Godless” will indeed be released on February 24, 2021 and will count 13 original tracks.

The LP will combine both classic dance tracks and more lyrical ones but remaining faithful to their roots augmented with today’s beats. The digital version will be available on February 24 on all platforms while the CD version is expected in the label’s stock on March 15.

You can already check out “Razorblade” right here which was also the track the band submitted to “Face The Beat 6”, the Side-Line powered mega charity compilation.

Godless by Pro Patria

The CD will comes as a 6-panel digipak with slipcase, Pit-Art technology as hand numbered copies in a limited edition of just 200 copies. Pre-orders are open now right here.

Track list

Razorblade
Tomorrow
War! (Till The Day We Die)
Godless
The Power Is Mine
One More Time
Dignity Under Attack
Limits To Madness
Ride
Landslide
Angel
The End
Fearless

About Pro Patria

The band was formed back in the early ’90s and released 2 demo cassettes, “Spasmaticae” (1993 ) and “In Combat – Veni Vidi Vici” (1995) before releasing their first CD “Quod Erat Demonstrandum” in 1997 on PVC Productions. That label was founded in 1986 by Peter Vercauteren to distribute all Pro Patria and 7th Avenue Revenge releases. These early demos have become real collector’s items by now.

Mostly due to personal reasons and the disappointment after the Celtic Circle bankruptcy the band took quite a long hiatus. Peter continued to work together with David Vallée (Lith) who assisted him during the last Pro Patria concerts (the last they did was in Arlon in 2002).

After the prolonged silence the band finally did return in 2017 to release “Back to Basics” followed by “Executioner” in 2019. Read the review of ‘Godless’.

Legendary Belgian EBM project Pro Patria returns with 3rd full length!

Bernard - Side-Line Staff — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 11:27:52 +0000

Pro Patria

“Executioner” is the title of the 3rd full length of the legendary Belgian EBM project Pro Patria.

Originally, Peter V, founder and currently the band’s only full-time member, had the intention to bridge the gap between their 1997 debut “Quod erat Demonstrandum” and the harsh and aggressive “Back to Basics” 2017 return to the scene. Known for their somewhat bombastic sound in their early days he decided to compile various EBM styles of the past thirty-five years.

You can read more about the band in the interview we had with Pro Patria last year.

The CD also features 2 bonus-tracks, that are quite different to the rest of the album: the newwavish “Creature of the Night” and a re-work of “Oppression”, the very first song ever recorded by Pro Patria back in 1988.

Check out the videoclip for “Executioner”

V/A W-Fest (DCD Album – Wool-E-Discs)

Inferno Sound Diaries — Mon, 19 Nov 2018 20:30:27 +0000

Genre/Influences: New-wave, EBM, minimal-electro, dark-electro, gothic.

Background/Info: This compilation featuring 26 bands is a way to remember the great W-Fest (festival) that took in place this Summer in Belgium. The festival was spread over 4 days, 3 scenes and featured an impressive number of bands. The organization invited some legendary 80s artists next to contemporary groups.

Artists: Parade Ground, A Split Second, Simi Nah, Dive, Suicide Commando, TB Frank & Baustein, Vine La Fête, A Slice Of Life, Flesh & Fell, Doganov, Red Zebra, The Breath Of Life ao.

Content: The first CD is clearly devoted to different kinds of electronic underground music. Parade Ground and A Split second will Takes us back in time with some legendary 80s songs while the electro-pop & minimalism of other bands such as Simi Nah, Enzo Kreft, Vive La Fête reveal contemporary 80s inspired sounds. It also is a way to rediscover some living legends such as Dive and Suicide Commando plus smaller bands such as Mildreda, Pro Patria, Herrnia.

The second disc brings us a mix of ‘old’ and contemporary gothic/new-wave. Red Zebra is a band we all know in Belgium, and which remains one of our best 80s ambassadors. A Slice Of Life could be the next big thing from Belgium. Here again you’ll discover very diversified groups moving from Ground Nero to Flesh & Fell, from Doganoc to The Breath Of Life etc.

+ + + : This is a fully enjoyable compilation, bringing different genres and especially music decades together. It also is a way to realize Belgium has a real great underground scene.

– – – : I just regret there aren’t more ‘exclusive’ tracks featured on the album, but it remains first of all a way to promote a great festival, already announced for 2019!

Conclusion: After the terrible lost of the Eurorock festival, Belgium moves on with a new ‘big fest’: W-Fest.

Best bands: A Split second, Enzo Kreft, Herrnia, Vive La Fête, A Slice Of Life, Flesh & Fell, red Zebra, Doganov, The Breath Of Life.

Rate: (8).

Label: www .wool –e –shop .be / www .facebook .com /woolediscs

About W-Fest

W-Fest is an annual new-wave, EBM and gothic festival held in Belgium, running across several days and multiple stages. The 2018 edition drew on both veteran acts and contemporary bands, a mix reflected on this compilation.

The album was released on Wool-E Discs, the Belgian label that also documented the festival’s lineup through earlier compilations.

‘Click Interview’ with Pro Patria: ‘You Had To Feel The Pain’

Inferno Sound Diaries — Tue, 22 May 2018 17:00:11 +0000

Belgian formation Pro Patria has been set up by Peter Vercauteren (PVC). The band was mainly active during the 80s and rapidly became one of the most promising EBM formations from that time. As Peter explains, ‘the name Pro Patria was simply a coincidence of things; perhaps we were unconsciously influenced by the SA42-song at the time, but personally I was also obsessed with Latin, which also showed in many of the early songs’. Unfortunately things went the other way round, Pro Patria never broke through and finally stopped all activities. More than 15 years later Pro Patria was asked to play live again and Peter Vercauteren finally decided to reactivate the project. The self-released album “Back To Basics” reveal a passionate and retro-like EBM, which brought me to get in touch with Peter.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries / pics with kind permission of Jirka Blumenthal and Uwe Rudolph)

Q: Can you first of all remind us how Pro Patria saw the daylight and how did you get ‘contaminated’ by the EBM-virus?

Peter: Pro Patria saw the daylight halfway the eighties because of a friend who wanted to create a band and needed someone who could play keys. After a bumpy start, I gradually took control of the project and steered away from the original, funky-commercial intention. I had always been attracted by synths and electronic music and had become a great fan of Front 242, Skinny Puppy and other bands that had laid the foundations of EBM. When Nitzer Ebb opened the Depeche Mode tour, back in 1988, the whole audience was speechless… it was something that I’d never witnessed before because usually the support act gets booed at or people chuck pints of beer at them. Here they were all in shock, too overwhelmed to even speak a word! It brought a smile on my face and right there and then I knew in which direction I wanted to take my band. It would still take some time to get there, though.

Q: Pro Patria was without a shadow of a doubt one of the most promising Belgian EBM formations from the 90s. The consecration was the record deal with Celtic Circle Productions, but the label got bankrupt, the album got never released and Pro Patria finally stopped all activities. How do you look back at this period and what was the impact of it all on you as artist and on the man hiding behind the artist?

Peter: I think that the problem with Pro Patria, and other emerging EBM bands of the period, was that they had arrived just one step too late. EBM was mighty popular in the eighties, but suddenly, in the early nineties, this all changed. One day to the next, EBM was dead and it had all become either techno/house or grunge. Therefore I look back upon it with great frustration because nobody seemed to be interested in us, or EBM as a whole. Heck, even the gods of the eighties like Front 242, Nitzer, FLA and even Depeche Mode had turned their backs on their origins and had changed into either techno or grunge. So it was extremely hard for young, motivated EBM bands to raise an interest.

When we eventually found a label that still believed in EBM and us, CCP, we were overjoyed and worked extremely hard on our first real album, “Quod Erat Demonstrandum”, for 9 months. It was all wonderful and the music went to the factory for the CDs to be printed and… right on that very moment… CCP went bankrupt. So we were back at square one, albeit we then had a completely finished product to offer. Again I went door to door to all possible record labels but in vain. Typical was the reply we got from Belgium’s biggest independent label at the time: ‘It’s great what you’re doing, but we’d prefer if you could make it sound a bit more techno, that you’d become the ‘Belgian Prodigy’.

Perhaps I was too stubborn or simply stupid, but I was never going to make any concessions as far as the music was concerned and I kindly refused. Then Bert, my companion at the time, and I split up because he did want to embrace a more techno-oriented sound whereas I wouldn’t have it. I still did a number of great gigs with David Vallée (Lith – Eks.Center) but then my personal situation suddenly changed much for the worse and Pro Patria was forced into the background, where I believed it would slowly die. So all in all, it was not a happy period, even though the gigs themselves made me exhilarate.

Q: But years later it was because of the EBM community you finally reactivated Pro Patria, right? How did it really happen and how did you finally come to compose new songs?

Peter: As I said, I was convinced that Pro Patria was long dead. Then, David Vallée, who’s still a close friend, contacted me a couple of years ago and said: ‘Peter, do you realize that Pro Patria is actually popular?’ I didn’t want to believe him at first because it seemed impossible… I hadn’t done anything with the band in 15 years, the CDs had never made it to the market and of our old cassette demos I’d maybe sold 200 or 250 copies, if it really were that many. But then David sent me a link to Discogs.com and to my astonishment I saw that our old cassettes were being auctioned there for more than €100 each! And I felt incredibly stupid because I had thrown all of my remaining tapes into the bin years earlier.

Coincidentally, around the same time, I was also contacted by the people of Electric Tremor, who asked me if I wanted to be on stage again, during the “Familientreffen”-festival near Leipzig. In the meantime my personal situation had again changed, much for the better this time. I’m again surrounded by people who believe in me and who really want me to continue with Pro Patria. In the first place, I’d like to thank my wife for that. So I said: ‘Why not? Let’s give it a try and see how it goes.’ In the end, I think that the concert was a bit of a success and so I thought that maybe I should start creating something new. I was a bit anxious about it at first, because I had been out of it for so long and the “Familientreffen” also made me realize that EBM had become so big and professional… all of these other bands sounded so great… But to my surprise, once I had again pushed that ‘compose’ button in my head, the inspiration flowed out quickly.

Q: “Back To Basics” might indicate what the music is all about, a kind of retro-EBM inspired sound, but what means this album to you and what kind of opus (sound- & lyrical wise) did you want to accomplish?

Peter: First of all, I wanted to return with a bang. “Quod Erat Demonstrandum” had received great reviews twenty years ago and I could hardly come up with something less if I was going to be serious about reviving Pro Patria. I still had two or three songs on the shelf which I had already started composing during the “Quod Erat Demonstrandum“-production, but obviously that wasn’t enough. As I said, the EBM standard had been raised considerably over the last 20 years and I wondered if I was going to be able to match up. Then again, inspiration turned out to be a tidal wave, thundering down on me from the very dark 15 years I had endured. So it had to sound harsh, raw, you had to feel the pain, much unlike “Quod Erat Demonstrandum” which sounded so clean and perhaps too ‘finished’. For me it was an important part of the healing process.

Q: “Back To Basics” sounds darker and harder than early Pro Patria stuff. What does it reveal about your sources of inspiration, your perception of contemporary electronic music and the equipment that has been used to compose this work?

Peter: With Pro Patria been and gone, all of the music that used to motivate and inspire me died inside of me as well. Surprisingly, the only music that still meant anything to me was Bach and I often hid behind my piano in an impossible attempt to forget reality. Imagine the shock when I found out how magnificent contemporary EBM had become! Yet I deliberately refused to listen to other music during production because I didn’t want to be influenced. It had to be pure Pro Patria, nothing else. The only thing I occasionally listened to was “Quod Erat Demonstrandum”. I went back to my roots (‘back to basics’) and wondered how Pro Patria would have evolved if it had continued to exist all of this time. Hence darker and harder. “Quod Erat Demonstrandum” was also a useful guide in order to help me with production, which was by far the greatest obstacle.

I’m not a techie who’s picky about the instruments one has to use. It’s not which equipment you use but how you use it. On “Quod Erat Demonstrandum” for example, we mainly used Roland D20 and D70 keyboards. Rather the sort of instruments one associates with commercial happy-flappy music. On “Back to Basics” I drove the D20 through an old guitar rack to get some amazing sounds. Unfortunately this procedure took away some of the depth in the music. It’s always a compromise and you have to find that perfect balance between what you want to convey and still keep the music pleasurable to listen to, especially in this particular case with music filled with rage.

Q: This album clearly belongs to the so-called ‘DIY’ (do it yourself) culture so how did you manage all different aspects of the job (recording, mixing, production, promotion, distribution, social media…) and what do you think about the evolution compared to the 90s?

Peter: Eh… I don’t know whether I managed well altogether. “Quod Erat Demonstrandum” was mixed and produced by Marc Schellekens, a highly skilled studio engineer. I, on the other hand, consider myself to be a musician, certainly not a producer. Therefore the hardest aspect was not composing (all 8 new songs on “Back To Basics” were composed and worked out in six weeks’ time), but trying to make it sound decent enough. I’m still not very happy about the result, but it’s a steep learning curve and I’m sure that I’ll do better next time.

Another aspect of not being 20 anymore, is that you have more responsibilities in life. As a youngster, you can easily spend all of your savings on equipment and studio and you can’t care less about the cost. When you’re approaching 50, you tend to get a bit more careful and you also wonder if a certain investment is going to be worthwhile. I could have spent a thousand Euros to have the CD mastered by a professional, but if you’re hoping to sell only 200 to 300 CDs, it’s going to be difficult to get some return on investment.

Moreover, I have moved to Italy 8 years ago, a country where EBM simply doesn’t exist, so it was impossible to find help nearby. As regards to promotion etcetera… I may be a beginner as far as mixing and mastering is concerned, but I’m an absolute zero with promotion and social media. It’s part of an unpleasant discovery I made about myself i.e. that I’m seriously autistic (“Living In A Cage”). A positive thing for me about the music world now, compared to 20 years ago, is that it has become much more on-line and far less personal. It allows me to hide behind my computer screen and it has also become a lot easier to spread your music all across the globe. Fortunately there are a number of people out there who haven’t hesitated to lend me a hand, and in the first place I’d like to thank Sébastien Bourlier (Blondwülf) for everything he’s done to bring Pro Patria back into the spotlights.

Most of all, I’m overjoyed that EBM’s back, stronger and more alive than ever and I feel extremely honored that Pro Patria received a warm welcome back from the EBM community.

Pro Patria – Back To Basics (CD Album – PVC Productions)

Inferno Sound Diaries — Sun, 22 Apr 2018 19:30:46 +0000

Genre/Influences: EBM.

Background/Info: Belgian EBM formation Pro Patria gained some recognition during the 90s. The consecration of their Front 242-inspired body music should be an album and an EP, which were planned to be released on Celtic Circle Records. But the German label went bankrupt and both releases never saw the daylight. The band disappeared from the radars, but the EBM community didn’t forget Pro Patria. The single member on board, Peter Vercauteren (PVC), reactivated the project and this new album has been released 20 years later.

Content: The title of the album clearly reveals the influences and sound approach of Pro Patria. We’re going back to the essence of EBM, but the inspiration is no longer comparable to Front 242. The sound became darker and the vocals harsher. It sometimes makes me think of Vomito Negro, but the songs especially reflect the ‘dark Belgian spirit’ from the late 80s and early 90s. Some songs reveal a more sophisticated approach. The album also features the song “Pray For Salvation”, which was originally released in 1997 and still sounds very accurate.

+ + + : Pro Patria is no longer comparable to its early work (released on cassette format) and yet it remains pure- and 100% Belgian EBM. This retro-like approach will appeal for the fans of old-school EBM. I like the cold sound treatments and the somewhat unpolished production. I’ve been impressed by the enraged vocals, which perfectly fit to the oppressive, cold sound. I’m more into a song like “The Vampire Girl”, which is more sophisticated and carried by a great and deep bass line.

– – – : The sound production is raw and unpolished. That’s a choice for sure reminding me of the 90s. It’s not that I don’t like this old-school treatment, but I think the sound production could have been more refined without losing the original spirit from the 90s. It’s a bit comparable to the front cover revealing an old-styled artwork.

Conclusion: This album reminds us of the golden years of Belgian EBM; a time where Belgium became a very influential country for this music genre. I think it’s a pity Pro Patria never got an album released on CD format back in time because they had the skills to reach a wider recognition.

Best songs: “Never Back Down”, “The Vampire Girl”, “There’s No Light”.

Rate: (7½).

Artist & Label: www .propatria .be / www .facebook .com /propatriaband

About Pro Patria

Pro Patria is the project of Belgian musician Peter Vercauteren (PVC), formed in the mid-1980s. The band became one of Belgium’s promising EBM formations of that decade, signing with Celtic Circle Productions for an album and an EP that never saw release after the German label went bankrupt; Pro Patria then went inactive. Vercauteren discussed this history in a 2018 Click Interview with Side-Line, around the release of “Back To Basics”.

Vercauteren later signed Pro Patria to Insane Records, releasing the “Godless” LP in 2021. The project continued with “Piercing Through The Armour” in 2022 before being put on hold the same year, when Vercauteren began releasing music under his own name.