VI.BE

Founded in 2011, risen from the ashes of Mindstab, Darqo was born. After some changes in the line-up (Joost from King Hiss on guitars, Tom Denolf from Idiots on drums, Niek Devos on guitars) they settled with Jelle from MIAVA on the drums and Darqo was ready conquer the stages as a five piece with Tjalle Groen providing live visuals. In the years after that they shared numerous stages with bands like MIAVA, Brutus, Eleanora, Oathbreaker, Every Stranger Looks Like You, It It Anita,…

In 2020 they were scheduled to play the ALCATRAZ METAL FESTIVAL in Kortrijk but this was postponed to 2022 for known reasons.

2016. This is the year they released their first album NightsInTheScullery. This was released on wooden USB sticks. Limited to 100 pieces. This quickly sold out and they pressed the album on magenta vinyl. Also limited to 100 pieces. All this was released in own management. In 2021 the song Icarus was placed at 385 of the 666 heaviest songs in the Zwaarste Lijst from Studio Brussel.

2020. A global pandemic shuts down the entire world. 4 friends from Lichtervelde who calls themselves Darqo are forced to stop rehearsing and to stop recording new music at their studio. A couple of months pass by and they get the idea to experiment with home recording. They are not able to record bass or drums at home so they have to improvise. Bjørn makes a noisy drone sample at home and sends this to Thomas. Not being able to record actual bass, Thomas decides to try his luck with a Moog bass synth plugin and succeeds to record a wobbly low bass track. They agreed they would send the track to 1 person each time without the previous person to know what they recorded. So the track went to Tjalle. He provided some foley sounds and an acoustic guitar riff. At this point the track went to Jelle who plays drums in Darqo. Instead of a drum beat Jelle makes a dreamy guitar track with the help from his Ebow. Still nobody knows how the song will sound. Finally, Cisn gets the track and he adds some more low end and some distorted guitar and mixes everything together. The Hauer Principle is born.

The song gets no further attention at this point. Until early 2021, they get the idea to release a EP to tie the gap between their first record NightsInTheScullery and the upcoming second album end of 2021. They still had one song that was only released on the Polderriffs VOL I vinyl and they reworked this song, added some bass and guitars and that was that. Nemo’s War (Creeptown mix) is born.

After some discussion what to do with the actual release, Darqo agrees with Polderrecords to release the album as an digital EP with the option to release this on vinyl later on. Bjørn makes the artwork and just like that, Tannhauser Gate is born.

Tannhauser Gate doesn’t sound like anything they released before. Exploring the range of what they are capable off they made this droney, ambient, noise EP. NightsInTheScullery was a heavy sludge forward album and now they made this more atmospheric and dreamy EP. Constantly evolving they’re sound so they won’t sound the same twice.