Wode
s/t

Wow, that is a cool artwork – is what I first thought when this album arrived in my mailbox. Many months later I have listened to this album and now I am writing about it. I also thought that if the album were anywhere near as good as the artwork it would be a great album. So what about this Manchester trio and their debut album? Well, if you hurry you might still have a chance to pick up their debut as a vinyl LP, the artwork alone would certainly make it interesting.

Musically it is black metal of the traditional kind, not really a quality stamp but these guys have something that makes them sound way, way, way, way, and a lot more way more talented and high quality than most traditional black metal band. They sound dark, raw and evil – as a black metal band should. The production is high quality, modern yet true to form and that is one of their tricks: they sound true to form yet have a feel of freshness to their music. Their name is from an Old English word meaning 'wood' and 'madness, how’s that for duality? Six pretty long tracks make up this album, three on each side of the LP, it takes about 48 minutes to play through and due to the genre you cannot really expect it to be the most varied album you have ever heard.

But it is a very good album, especially when considering that most that is being released in the black metal genre is utter garbage – it is not every day you even hear something that is remotely listenable. That alone makes this a positive experience, but it is not just that it is good for black metal, it is good full stop and I like it and a fan of the genre should like it at least twice as much as I do. So I would describe this as a recommended album and that isn’t just for those of you who like black metal, I think these guys could appeal to a fairly wide audience and that without abandoning the dark and evil spirit that is true black metal.

All the songs are good on this album but none stands out as better or worse than the rest, they could have made the album a little shorter but that might just be down to my none black metal fanatism and it gets a little much for me. The good thing is that they manage to do traditional black metal and still sound quite fresh, that’s great. I think you should check out this album, and the vinyl LP could be well worth buying.

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