Woland hail form Helsinki and class themselves as “post black metal” and also proclaim a defiant mission statement that: “The music relies on a foundation without boundaries and a focused vision. When others crawl in the mud and idolise the past, the band gazes to the future with a Nietzschean vision and welcome it with opened arms. The core idea is to rise above one self and become one with divinity, to be everything you can be".
Judging by this and their highly stylised promo pics they certainly have all the gear, but do they have the ideas.
Yes…. YES they certainly do…. and by the truck load.
*Disclaimer* if you associate the phrase ‘post black metal’ with the likes of Deafheaven then move along there is nothing to see here. In fact more suitable tags would be ‘symphonic’ and ‘industrial’ or indeed ‘epic’.
A brief squall of feedback is the calm before the storm that is opening track ‘Conquer All’ as it hits hard with an up-tempo bouncing groove with an absolutely HUGE RIFF that’s somewhere between black n roll and industrial - seriously the sound is colossal! – before a Gojira-esque technical riff serves as an interlude (!?) into another colossal sounding RIFF interspersed with symphonic breakdowns.
So….yeah…. WOW!
‘Art Of Ascension’ starts with a very FINNISH melodic RIFF before kicking into an up-tempo bouncing industrial groove once again with another killer RIFF/ In-fact I could easily sum up this review right now by paraphrasing the The Wildhearts “Riff after Riff after mother fucking Riff!”.
‘Living Water’ is one of the few out and out curveballs in the package as halfway through the RIFFAFON (Trademark: Me) it deviates into an acoustic flamenco inspired passage (yes, really) leading into a grandiose prog rock guitar solo (again yes, really) before kicking back into the main melo death RIFF. ‘None’ gets us back on track with a quiet/loud industrialised groove with the highlights being a casually tossed in RIFF at 3:18 that is so ridiculously sexy most bands would try to base an entire career around it and also a chorus so big it should be classed as a WMD!
‘Ecstasy and Rapture’ starts of as industrial nightclub floor filler, slowly morphs into technical death metal wizardry and when you think its run its course THEN it gets crazy (plus and minus marks for over inventiveness on this one). A piano Interlude leads us into ‘Live Forever’. This starts as slow doom laden metal before picking up pace to a melo death rhythm until (which as you will have guessed by now) the obligatory diversions into other delightfully different territories as does final track ‘Elevated Existance’ which is a suitable amalgamation of the various styles used throughout this masterpiece to create stunning and dramatic finale.
Christ alive I’ve gushed enough, just buy this album and buy me a pint later!
