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| Artwork by Alexandre Goulet. |
Wake's previous album, Misery Rites, should have garnered the attention of anyone who hadn't been paying attention already. It was a potent blend of black metal and grinding madness. Anyone who thought new album, Devouring Ruin was going to follow the same formula would be wrong. Sure, those key elements are present and accounted for but they've further honed their melodic touches and technicality and shifted in a more deathly direction.
Opener “Dissolve and Release” opens the listener's ears with a fairly melodic section but the hammer has to drop, right? It does with the force of a Prairie blizzard leading into “Kana Tevoro (Kania! Kania!)”. Technicality and off-kilter riffing compete with blasting drums and chest-caving vocals. As claustrophobic as it sounds the solos are quite expansive while still grounded in darkness.
Elsewhere we find demons unleashed. Fast, angry, and destructive. Vocals breaks and a slower pace rub elbows with more impact riffing. The back and forth between annihilation and lamentation feels more like reality than some bands one-vector approach. “Mouth of Abolition” features devastating deathgrind sewn together with prog touches and melody. The vocals, however, give no quarter amid the pummeling, yet there's enough emotion throughout to pull something out of you.
“Torchbearer” sees an atmosphere of doom devolve into noisy paranoia. A slow chug drags the listener through swamps of death before it rockets into black metal fury. There's really a lot more than just that as this track tops 10 minutes! Not too typical for grind! I don't think anyone has accused Wake of being typical.
“In the Lair of the Rat Kings” balances their signature grinding madness with some flourish. It's a banger though; total annihilation with some real heavy movement. It leads right into the penultimate track, “Monuments to Impiety”. More rage, more speed, more angularity, more heavy-handed groove.
Other than its runtime of over seven minutes closer “The Procession” brings together all the elements present in the previous nine tracks (save the two “noisy/arty” interludes). It encapsulates all the deathly weight, speed changes and bulging muscularity Devouring Ruin is built upon. It even feels like a conclusion (to the album). It has a climactic feel like it's rising, freed from the ground it so mercilessly pounds.
Wake are seriously making a name for themselves. Not only in the grind scene but as one of Canada's best extreme acts. With Devouring Ruin they are elevating an already top shelf game. This is a band not content to sit on their laurels and remain in a comfortable zone. They're pushing themselves and genre conventions and we are all the beneficiaries.