Ashlar (Belgium)

As Kindred was winding down, the band that quickly became their metalcore-successor in the Limburg area of Belgium was Ashlar. They took Kindred's sound and added an 'evil' element to it, as corny as that may sound. They were more metal than Kindred, with a singer who was nothing short of a maniac on stage. Chewing on the occasional blood-capsule, rolling away his eyes till only the white showed, it was a bit ridiculous even back then but few people cared as the band was a tight metalcore-machine on stage... While the recordings show the potential this band had, this band's true power was on stage, always good times. The guitarist would mostly just chew on some bubblegum and play his riffs like they were the simplest power chords, while the bassist and drummer were laying down the heavy foundation of their sound. Good stuff and memorable shows.

They were around for a relatively brief time and managed to do only one proper release, the 'Enthroned In A So-Called Heaven' MCD, released in 1998. One thing to note here is that the singer sounds different on these recordings than live, because he was down with a cold during the recordings and thus had a sore throat which heavily affected his voice. Apart from that, this is a solid and good record which I still enjoy listening to.

They did record another record which unfortunately is hard to come by as it wasn't properly released. Thanxxx to Sebastian 'xUNBORNx' from the XCatalystX forums I've managed to get mp3's and scans of it. It was recorded in 2004 when they did a few reunion-shows and decided to record a couple of new songs. It's harder and even more metal than their first release, and definitely quality stuff once again.

Members went on to play in (the Dutch) Rancor and Sons Of Irah.

Ashlar - Enthroned In A So-Called Heaven MCD
Ashlar - self-titled MCD

Enemy Of The Sun (Belgium)

My all-time favorite band from Belgium is Kindred. However, all good things come to an end eventually, and Kindred was no exception. Shortly after Kindred's demise in late 1997, a couple of Kindred members got together with some friends and formed the first line-up of a new band, called Enemy Of The Sun. Things didn't work out however, and quickly the band folded again. A few months afterwards all 4 Kindred members got together again, added a 2nd guitarist and started working on Enemy Of The Sun material again, and this time things did work out. The band went into a different direction compared to their Kindred past and incorporated more noisy influences, different song-structures and ditched the metalcore. They released 2 records, the self-titled CD I posted here and a 3-song EP called 'Eclipse' (available here, also the person who requested this post). While I was personally not into EOTS the same way as with Kindred, EOTS certainly was a good band. After EOTS folded, singer Eric and bassist Walter formed a new band called troubleLOVESus, which took the experimentation level even further. I don't know what the members are doing currently, but I'm sure whatever they're doing, it will be good.

Enemy Of The Sun self-titled CD
Enemy Of The Sun myspace