Of Woe or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Gloom

Originally published at valleyofsteel.net.

After more than four years of effort, Ever Circling Wolves' second full-length album (and their fourth release overall) Of Woe or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Gloom was completed back in spring 2016, and later (January 2017) released by Cimmerian Shade Recordings.

The nine tracks on this album include two that we've heard before: "Cœur" which was originally released as a live-from-the-studio demo version way back in June 2012, and "In the Trench (Dear Eva Pt. 3)" -- an excellent re-recording of one of the tracks from the Chapter III EP (here supplemented by a piano set against some of the guitar riffs), and based on the added subtitle, apparently this has also become a sequel to the two "Dear Eva" tracks on their first album, The Silence from Your Room.

Of Woe also includes a rather wide range between its shortest and the longest tracks: at just a minute-thirty-five, "Ibn Qirtaiba" ("Thus go the holy words," a preface to religious incantations in the world of Dune) consists solely of some mellow clean guitar/bass parts (no drums or vocals here), while the epic final track that follows that interlude, "These are Ashes, These are Roots," is a solid fifteen and a half minutes of heavy death-doom riffs (sometimes accompanied by a sinister-sounding distorted organ).

Throughout the remainder of the album, the band focuses primarily on slow and weighty death-doom, while occasionally bringing in softer and post/atmospheric elements. Normally they have used one or two vocal parts, typically ranging between deep, deathy, and doomy, or gruff shouting/snarling; but occasionally, like toward the end of "Haunted," we find the addition of dualling clean vocal parts (sort of reminiscent of latter-day Woods of Ypres), and a pair of clean vocal parts also emerge in "Deeper" -- which are uncharacteristically NOT melancholy at all, but rather, if not exactly upbeat, then at least contented.

That last song follows from the instrumental track called "Challenger Deep," named after the depression in the Mariana Trench that is considered to be possibly the deepest spot on the ocean floor -- continuing with a thematic element (certainly an apt metaphor for the install mood expressed here) that was introduced with "In the Trench," the song that appeared on the last EP before sprouting up again on this new album.

Speaking of metaphors, dark vibes, and lyrical themes, another favorite song on Of Woe would definitely have to be "Lenore," which is overall presented in a starkly poetic manner, and more specifically its second verse contains several clear (although paraphrased) references to Edgar Allen Poe's famous "The Raven."

Altogether, a highly recommended listen -- as is this band's entire discography -- and an album that (even though this review was first written and published back in 2016 prior to the record's official release) currently sits at the top of my personal list of 2017's best output, and it'll take a very strong competitor to unseat it from that position!