The 2020’s has seen a process of metamorphosis for the Church of Ra and its members, and an evolution of its two leading artists. First Amenra abandoned the Mass honorific after six chapters for their excellent and bruising De doorn, their first full length for Relapse. Similarly, Belgian Black Metal visionaries Wiegedood have ripped themselves from the titling convention of the De Doden Hebben Het Goed series for their fourth full-length, the ominously titled There’s Always Blood At The End Of The Road (Century Media).
As well as a different way of baptising their works, the song structures contained within show a different dynamic and sees the trio stepping away from the expansive, lengthier desolate wildernesses of their previous works, cultivating their music eruptions into an increased number of more pointed yet no less epic pieces of violent art; shorter, more defined tracks that see Wiegedood manage to strike the perfect balance of a vitriolic performance while retaining enough measure and control to keep the musical output at the highest level and from descending into a chaotic mess.
A caustic opener, ‘FN SCAR 16’ sets the tone, pairing a repetitive flailing scything guitar barrage with the pained shrieks of Levy Seynaeve into an anguished howl of Blackened Metal ferocity that takes on-board the musical concepts of something like Mayhem’s Grand Declaration of War (Season of Mist), rather than the more rural contentions the Belgian collective have traditionally espoused.
Indeed, Mayhem are an interesting centre-point for the album – ‘And In Old Salamano’s Room, The Dog Whimpered Softly’ careers wildly, barely controlled, down the same feral path as its predecessor, before being reigned in, the vocal hate still wild, but the riffing taut, as a mid-paced alternate picking pattern provides the basis for a motif that leads into the first example of an Attila-esque droning vocal incantation; a style that plays a prevalent part in the more reflective and brooding sections of the album, such as the dark centre-piece, ‘Now Will Always Be’.
Repetition plays a key role throughout There’s Always Blood…, a valued and powerful Black Metal trope excellently utilised to dynamic effect – ‘Until It Is Not’ in particular combines a returning pattern and guitar section that, lycantropian in origin, recalls the exceptional wildness of Ulver’s Nattens Madrigal classic (also Century Media). An impassioned and anguished vocal injects a further element of ferocity, that, alongside an unusual motif, is a style that enables ‘Nuages’ to savage deep into the album.
These are not new clothes exposing an emperor, but nastier spikes added to an existing arsenal of violent weaponry. Less insidious, more severe, a refocused Wiegedood is a spectacular and powerful blackened entity indeed.
Buy the album here:
https://wiegedood.lnk.to/TheresAlwaysBloodAtTheEndOfTheRoad
8 / 10
STEVE TOVEY