There's something happening in Manchester, something dark.
Joining the ranks of blistering Black Metal from a city that seems to be turning into England's answer to Bergen (cold, wet, dark) are a new name, WODE, who present a three track demo of grim BM.
Much like fellow citizens
Pine Barrens,
Wode as as far removed from the bloated pomp of late 00s theatrical black metal as is possible.
Opening track
Trails of Smoke is all blastbeats and tremolo picking, bringing to mind
Arckanum with an underlying veneer of urban filth.
The blistering pace continues through
Earthwrath, the second track, which is, quite frankly a big, black, whirling maelstrom of a track that rattles along,
Beherit-style with enough South American type recklessness that it feels it might fall apart at any time, before all coming together and shuddering to a halt just a little over three minutes later.
Glorious.
Final track,
Last Days, starts with a doomy dreary intro before the chaos rears up again, beneath this track's frostiness you can pick up a punky feel to the riffing, not in an obvious way like
Darkthrone do or
Venom have done on occasion, but more in the sneery, cynical attitude you suspect is behind it.
In essence then, a fine fist in the face of all the pomposity that crept into black metal towards the end of the last decade, and along with
Pine Barrens and
Wynterfylleth, another powerful band coming from sprawl of Mancunia.
Ones to keep an eye out for on 2012.
The demo is available to buy/download from the band, but hurry, only 100 cassettes have been created!!
The band are at
tumblr, for now here is a stream of the first track;
