Praise for W.A.I.L.‘s Self-Titled from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: We may proclaim our love of French black metal practically every list, but if there was a single country who threatened the blackened supremacy, it would be Finland. And yeah, we know we’re already pretty obsessed with Finnish music in general, and how could we not be, it’s so amazing and weird and demented and over the top and unlike almost anything we’ve ever heard. So of course that weird / unique / whatthefuck vibe spills over into the real of the buzz and the black.
Off the top of our heads: Ride For Revenge, Aanal Beehemoth, Circle Of Ouroborus, Dead Reptile Shrine, Jumalhamara, Behexen, Clandestine Blaze, Beherit, Azaghal, Horna, Diaboli, Sargeist, Trollheim’s Grott, Barathrum, Satanic Warmaster, Ajattara, TorturiumÉ well, you get the drift. So you can now add the oddly monikered W.A.I.L. to the list. W.A.I.L. of course standing for Wisdom through Agony into Illumination and Lunacy, and while we weren’t able to discover too much about the band, other than that they were indeed from Finland, it hardly matters, this is some creepy and blackly doomy heaviness, which we’re digging big time.
After a repetitive trancelike intro, all chanted vox, weird glitches, and looped melody, the band unwind some dirgey low slung bass, before slipping into some classic sounding doom, downtuned and lumbering, a lurching plod, that soon explodes into chugging, pounding stretch of murky metallic heaviness, equal parts classic metal, twisted death metal, and black buzz. The vox a sinister croak, the song flitting from murk dirge to thrashing churn, before a cool droned out stretch of horn laden hypnorock, sorta wish that part would never end, totally creepy and mesmerizingly weird, before returning to the blackened metal fray.
The record continues on its black path, slipping from martial drumming laced old school doom, with deep moaned clean vox, to tripped out mathy post black metal, sounding almost like a way more minimal Deathspell, to some woozy double kick driven creepy crawly dirgery, to some classic metal worship, before returning to another creeping chunk of ambient blackness, with the churning doom backed off, now beneath more moaning horns and plinking piano.
The final track is a 12 minute monster, with a killer main riff, some stretches of serious thrashery, but with a gorgeous middle section that explodes from a flurry of eighties metal shredding, only to settle into a weird bit of gypsy strum, muted and minimal, before finishing off with a frenzy of lightning fast blackness, peppered with brief bits of doomy lope. It’s a dizzying tripped out, kick ass finish, to a record that definitely has us hankering for more…
At 40 years old, Aquarius is the oldest independent record store in San Francisco. We try to only carry music we love, and we’re always searching for more new, cool, weird and wonderful music. All of which we then share with you, our loyal customers.
Tags: Ahdistuksen Aihio, Album of the day, Aquarius Records, black metal, Death Metal, doom, W.A.I.L., Wisdom through Agony into Illumination and Lunacy
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 7th, 2011 at 3:12 am and is filed under 2011, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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