Withdrawal

Woe’s Chris Grigg commands plenty of black metal scene prestige; initially from his work in Krieg, but more so now off the back of the impressive releases with this, his own project. He was also the recipient of many hard-won internet points when he successfully hit the black metal scene’s widest barn door from as far away as ten paces- writing a blog post accusing Liturgy’s “Hunter Hunt Hendrix” of being a pretentious arse. He did this mainly because H.H.H. had seen fit to accompany his band’s music with a long-winded manifesto about their artistic intentions. I never actually read the offending document, but I find the fact that he wrote it endearing. It indicates an intention to actually challenge an audience- and if you listen to Liturgy’s extremely bloody good first album Renihilation, you find that they can actually back this ambition up musically.

That’s hardly the topic here, however. Woe do not expand genre parameters in the same way that Renihilation does. But while it rarely voyages far across boundaries, it is certainly up for the odd day trip. So, for example, opening track This is the End of the Story is introduced by a spindly lead guitar riff reminding me of Krallice (Colin Marston produces, by the way), but as the song progresses these elements are leashed to more orthodox black metal ideas. The patterns assumed by the blasting here are full of glowering tension, easily the equal of heralded recent traditionalist bands such as Winterfylleth. There are various points on the album where Woe experiment with sludgy moods, as well as more melodic rock passages, and in this sense we might fit Withdrawal alongside recent Enslaved or Twilight releases. The former, particularly, are evoked in the various clean vocal passages. These comparisons are a little misleading, though.

In fact, despite its wandering spirit, this easily stands up as classy and credible black metal in quite a traditional vein. There are some sublime examples of the art to be found here. Perhaps most impressive is All Bridges Burned, which expertly infuses its furious tempo with addictive, turbulent melody (including a sudden, early-Ulver-inspired, clean guitar cutaway). Then in its second half it morphs into striding, laid back rock. Similarly heterodox is Song of My Undoing, which shifts through a range of different moods with great deftness- a pleasant surprise, given that it starts life as a less intellectual version of Carpathian Forest replete with cudgelling backbeat. So, all things considered, it would be a grave error of judgement for black metal traditionalists to miss out on this.