Metal comes in many shades, but none more black than black metal. Ironically, many exponents of this particular subgenre, even more than most, have become so immersed in the genre's trappings that the whole scene feels parodic.
In many respects, WRNLRD appear to share more common ground with the 'first wave' of black metal from the 1980s than the church-burning make-up wearing caricatures of the 'second wave' that emerged in the 90s to much media outcry. This is definitely a good thing: espousing the low-budget production values of the earlier bands, this five-tracker is largely driven by super-fizzy guitars and owes much to the thrash / death metal genres, as marked by the subsonic vocals, which are gargled and snarled, spitting out almost indecipherable lyrics.
It's a good trick that many of the current crop of black metal acts could learn from: if you're going to pen cringe-inducingly lame lyrics about Satan and death, save a whole heap of embarrassment by rendering them inaudible. Of course, I don't know if WRNLRD's lyrics are lame - they're wholly impenetrable, processed, mangled guttural growls that add to the enigma of WRNLRD - the man and the band.
However, WRNLRD's sound expands massively on the template created by other bands, past or present, pushing in myriad different directions. There are moments of avant-garde experimentalism and woozy, warped-sounding jazz, as on 'Grave Dowser' and it's clear that no one genre is nearly sufficient to contain the wide-ranging scope of the buzzing racket that is WRNLRD. Sandwiched neatly between the crackling distortion of 'Grave Dowser' and the sparse piano interlude that is 'Luster,' 'Midnight Drive' features Integrity's Dwid Hellion on vocals, and it sounds like a curb-crawl through hell. The tile track, which brings the EP to its conclusion, sees a psych-out guitar in collision with a rubbery doom riff and a truly explosive sludge bass that breaks at the mid-point and is enough to judder even the most robust of bowels.
|
While boasting of being 'almost certainly among the more obscure black metal projects currently active within the US,' if the band continue to produce releases of such quality and strange uniqueness, WRNLRD might not be all that obscure for much longer.
WRNLRD on MySpace
|
