Netherlands

Hailing from New York, Netherlands arrived on the scene in 2012 via the crushing Fantasmatic, channeling a doomy, eclectic, and technically masterful strain of punk-addled hard rock with the explicit goal of producing music that is correspondingly "light-hearted, brutal, ecstatic."

Guitarist and vocalist Timo Ellis conceived the project; the versatile serial collaborator has previously joined forces with Cibo Matto, John Zorn, Ween, the Melvins, and Yoko Ono. Ellis, Chelsea Wierbonski, John Musto, and Damien Moffitt formed the Brooklyn-based unit in 2010 and issued their debut album Fantasmatic independently in 2012. Silicon Vapor followed in 2013, Audubon appeared in 2016 on Prosthetic Records, and the group kept reshaping hard rock subgenres with 2018’s Black Gaia and 2020’s Zombie Techno.