Valley of Desolation

Tighttothenail
Fans of oppressive atmosphere, suffocatingly bleak soundscapes and music as a form of endurance, rejoice! For I have your new favourite band. Woes are from Bradford here in the UK and described their sound sound to me as having a ‘dungeon quality’, which pretty much instantly made me realise that I was going to love it, and I was not disappointed. Formed back in 2011, this EP marks their first release and Valley Of Desolation (a nod to the overbearing countryside landscapes of West Yorkshire) is an ice cold fist plunged directly into your soul. Self recorded, it’s effect as a rigorous war of attrition on your ears is helped by a disgusting lo-fi production: every cymbal crash a slab of ice across your back, every sinewy riff like skeletal fingers down your spine. Dean Venyige’s vocals are inhuman. There’s no other way to put it. Words and syllables are all but lost, his voice is a sheet of pain and misery, a driving Northern rain of hatred, a static hiss.

I’m blown away by this record. It references black metal in its frantic drumming and spidery guitar licks and blends in hammer blows of doom and sludge to add to the grief. The way ‘Darkness Falls’ slows things down during a snail paced, crushing mid-section before whipping the pace back up into a barely decipherable snowstorm of noise is stunning. Imagine a mixture of the horrific barbarism of California’s Gehenna and our very own (and site favourites) psychedelic-blackened punk-headfuck Cease To Exist and you’re almost there. Rumour has it there’s a split release with the latter in the piepline. God help us.

http://tighttothenail.com/introducing-woes/

7th / Jun / 2013