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Archive · 2012–Present

The
History.

From an art-historical idea to more than a decade of music, stages and changing forms.

The beginning

Before there was music,
there was an idea.

Pictura Poesis began in 2012, when art-history student Sheree Hoogenberg and Harald Bouten recognised a musical possibility in ut pictura poesis, the centuries-old relationship between image and poetry.

The idea was explicit from the start: begin with a work of art, look beyond the image into its story, symbolism and historical context, and turn what emerges into music.

That starting point allowed beauty and aggression to exist side by side. Orchestral and melodic passages could meet black and death metal without either side defining the whole. The image, and the world behind it, would decide where the music went.

Timeline

Chapters.

2012–13

The first experiments

A proof of concept.

The first line-up grew largely out of friendships and earlier bands. Sheree Hoogenberg and Rick Krause both played keyboards, continuing an approach that had worked before and supporting an early ambition to perform as much of the orchestral material live as possible. Most of the other musicians came from the same wider circle, while vocalist Mike Vogels joined through an online advertisement.

The first songs included The Face of Death, Death and the Maiden and The Raft of Medusa. Together they formed the core of In Death's Embrace, the band's first demo in 2013.

Recorded at home, it was less a finished statement than a test. Could an idea born from art history actually work as a metal band? The response suggested that it could.

2013–15

From project to band

Proving it on stage.

The demo brought Pictura Poesis into the underground live circuit across the Netherlands and Belgium. Shows followed quickly, the network around the band expanded and the first audience began to form.

In 2014, Demonic Delusions moved the band out of the home-recording phase. The EP was recorded in a studio with a befriended producer at Tombstone Studio in Nieuwstadt and pushed darker, more black-metal influenced elements further into the sound.

More importantly, it proved that Pictura Poesis was more than a few songs built around an unusual concept. There was enough material, identity and momentum to fill a set and function as a live band. Support shows with acts including Rotting Christ and Ancient Rites helped widen both the band's network and its audience.

2015–17

Becoming something larger

Miseriae Mundi.

Writing the first full-length changed the scale of the project. The music became heavier, more demanding and more ambitious, and the collaboration around it had to become more professional as well.

That development also exposed a difference in musical direction. Mike increasingly gravitated towards the more extreme end of metal, while Pictura Poesis continued to search for the balance between aggression, melody and orchestration on which it had been founded. The paths eventually separated, and Bas de Esch joined during the creation of the album.

Released in 2017, Miseriae Mundi became the band's first full-length record. Its ten tracks moved through art, war, mythology, Dutch history, mortality and human conflict, including the three-part Ego Sum Bellum. It marked a clear step from underground demos and EPs towards a larger and more complete presentation of the band.

The period also brought larger stages and shows, including an appearance with Belphegor, while the band's identity became increasingly defined.

2017–19

A new voice, wider horizons

Beyond familiar stages.

Miseriae Mundi was completed with Bas de Esch, but live ambitions soon moved in different directions. Not long afterwards, Pictura Poesis met Linn Liv and a new chapter began.

Rather than immediately creating another conventional album, the band returned to its own archive. Nightmares, released in 2018, combined reworked earlier material with newer work. It functioned less as a second full-length statement and more as a retrospective and a presentation of the new line-up, with Linn's voice at its centre.

The years around it became the band's most international live period. After extensive shows in the Netherlands and Belgium, Pictura Poesis crossed into Germany, played MetalDays in Slovenia in 2018 and travelled considerably further north.

Connections made in the Netherlands with the Icelandic bands Rán and Devine Defilement eventually led to a show at Gaukurinn in Reykjavík. What had started as a local underground band was now finding stages well beyond its original circuit.

2019–22

A quieter chapter

Momentum fades.

After years of increasingly frequent shows and releases, the pace changed. Private circumstances and several line-up changes slowed the band down while new material was already beginning to take shape.

After a show at De Groene Engel in 2019, live activity became sparse. The pandemic then brought what remained of the band's momentum to an almost complete stop.

Pictura Poesis never formally disappeared, but for a while very little moved.

2022–Present

Finding the thread again

Revisiting the beginning.

When Harald Bouten and Linn Liv returned to the studio in 2022, the choice fell on one of the band's earliest songs. Death and the Maiden had helped define the first years of Pictura Poesis, making it a fitting test of whether that creative connection was still there.

The result did not trigger an immediate return to full activity, but it did reopen a door. Pre-production on new material resumed and another song from the early catalogue began to take shape in a new form.

Today, Pictura Poesis exists primarily as a creative project centred around Harald and Linn rather than as an active live band. New recordings continue at their own pace, with room for old material to be reconsidered and new work to develop without forcing it into a fixed format or timetable.

The idea remains

The image still
comes first.

A Pictura Poesis song still begins much as it did in 2012. A painting catches the eye. Its story, context or symbolism invites a closer look. From there, music and words begin to form.

Harald Bouten has remained the principal composer throughout the band's history. The line-ups, stages and pace of the project have changed, but that creative starting point has not.

The process is deliberately uncomplicated: find a work worth exploring, see what lies behind it, and turn that discovery into music. Sometimes the result becomes melodic and orchestral. Sometimes it becomes far heavier. Usually it becomes both.

More than a decade later, the principle remains the same.

Explore the works