Zyklon may not have come to a wretched end but they did kind of fizzle out with nobody exactly crying about it. Whilst former collaborator in all things Emperor, Ihsahn has seemed to establish himself in his own right and has delivered three acclaimed solo albums it is almost as though Samoth has been treading water, so could The Wretched End be the band to resurrect him from the doldrums?
Well in a way yes, this is a solid album which after a couple of spins really grew on me. The group was established by Samoth and former Zyklon live bassist Cosmos from Motorgrator along with drummer Nils Fjellström who has himself played with Dark Funeral and In Battle amongst others. The term death/ thrash is descriptively bandied around to describe them musically and that is a pretty fair assessment of what to expect sound wise. After a mood building introduction the album piles in properly with ‘Red Forest Alienation.’ Lyrics are totally apocalyptic throughout the album and song titles like ‘Numbered Days’ and rants at greedy corporations match this mood. It is absolutely no surprise to see that Bard Eithun was involved with some of the lyrical input here. The first storming number actually reminded me a bit of Behemoth, it has that rabid feel about it due to rampaging pace and Cosmo’s feral vocals. An excellent spiralling guitar riff weaves around ‘The Armagaddonist’ and some nice samples add to the atmosphere which makes me think of someone finger poised on the button to unleash the apocalypse. Grandiose leads flow all over this one and the slowed down violence works very well here whilst the brutality is still very much retained.
There is a lot of melody about this, slower numbers like the aforementioned ‘Numbered Days’ have a real solid groove about them and the jagged and elongated guitar riffs scythe away and stand out in the mix. Of course when the foot is pressed down firmly on the throttle again as on the gnarly death thrash of ‘The Juggernaut Theory’ things rage along quite nicely and there is lots of opportunity to get the head banging. Hopefully this is neither an ominous beginning or a band that are going to live up to their name. I feel the same sort of impact from these songs as I did for those on ‘World Ov Worms’ and hopefully this time round the slope is all going to be upwards.
http://www.myspace.com/thewretchedend
