DØDSFERD : "Wrath"

Feels like I have not covered as much black metal outside of the dedicated month in February this year. A few reasons for this include an unwillingness to sit through an album of blasting that does nothing to distinguish itself, and perhaps not many high-profile black metal albums coming out as current social trends are more likely to label the genre as problematic and want it run through the American hipster filter for bands like the subpar Agriculture, who rode the hype train. This Greek project holds a middle finger up to such notions and plays a fairly straightforward version of black metal which is deliberate enough to care about songwriting. Their 2015 album "Wastes of Life' made it to the number two slot of the Top 10 Black Metal albums for that year. So they are capable of delivering the goods.

This is the 12th album they have released, and Wrath handles all the guitar and vocal duties. The second song is as fast as the opening track so here is hoping they at least modulate around these thrashing speeds to create the illusion of dynamics. The guitar is to offer some melodic nuance, but not a huge shift. It feels less like depressive black metal and is marginally more moody than your average blast fest. Another issue is that to be offering up seven-minute songs there is not a great deal of variance within them. There is a little more for "Ragining Lust of Creation" but is it 10 minutes worth? The dry midrange raps of the vocals could also use some dynamics. We are midway into the song and they are still hitting you with the same buzz of tremolo-picked guitars. When the riff is accented in more of a gallop than a blast they are still not really breaking any new ground. 

They are committed to bath you in their need for speed going into "Spiritual Lethargy". The first minute of the song feels tedious, making the four that follow something to be endured. We are no longer in the late 90s, nor is this even 2010 when this sort of thing began its crawl into the mainstream consciousness of metal fans. It is a blur of stagnant that does not bite as hard as it thinks it does. It becomes white noise that fades into the background. "Heaven Drops with Human Filth" is a variation of what they hit you with on the previous song, perhaps a little nastier in its intentions. It is a clear example of when playing fast loses its effectiveness as it numbs the listener. There will not be anyone wearing a bullet belt who is not going to say this is cvlt enough for them. But what about songwriting? What makes this an album worth owning? 

From a production standpoint, the album sounds pretty good. All the elements in this storm sit where they should, though the vocal are more prominent than expected when you listen to this through headphones. The drumming is impressive enough, and more than gets the job done, but if it were allowed to groove a little the songs might have benefited. No such luck, just straight-up blasting. For what this is I will give the album a 7 as they play their instruments well, and capture all the sound they wanted, but the songwriting feels dialed in. 

pst249