Release date: 15th January 2018
Earth Made Flesh is the debut album from Finnish avant-garde black metal project Wyrmwood and for a debut offering, it sure is a mighty little piece. It may not be the easiest of listens, but dig a little deeper and you’ll surely be impressed. It’s not a typical black metal listen, incorporating a lot of ambience and instruments not necessarily associated with the genre (including saxophone!) and that definitely deserves commending.
Wyrmwoods takes its time in setting the scene – there’s no rush as the tracks progress and it subsequently becomes more of an immersive listen as a result. Although at times things feel a little long and drawn out, you get the impression that that’s exactly what was intended with the music. It’s a somewhat uncomfortable approach but it works.
The highlight of the album for me is second track The Greater Festival Of Masks. With a little more movement and energy to it, the striking introduction immediately grabs your attention before you’re presented with more noisier approach that hits you like a tonne of bricks. The song mainly follows this approach until the end, but the little smatterings of melodies that pop up every once in a while really help to give the song a little more of a sparkle and adds a lot more body to it.
As a whole, this is a fairly impressive listen as long as you can stick with it! There’s a lot of promise to Wyrmwood’s sound, so hopefully Earth Made Flesh will be the start of something special for this talented musician.
7.5/10
