Band: Woods Of Desolation
Album: Torn Beyond Reason
Year: 2011
Label: Northern Silence Production
Genre: Depressive Atmospheric Black Metal
Woods of Desolation is a Depressive Black Metal band from Australia and was formed in 2005. Torn Beyond Reason was the band's second full lenght after myriads of demos and split releases since its formation.
The quality of the sound in this full lenght is by far one of the best that ive heard so far. The multi layered guitars were utilized to its fullest potential creating a wide landscape of melancholic sound and atmosphere with the lead notes continued to soar high on top of the main riffs while the screaming vocals enchanted each and every song with sorrowful wails, broken but still hoping for one last breath of air. Clean melodic singing made its appearrance here and there but being heavy with reverbs and echoes, made the clean singing sounded hollow and empty.
This album contains six songs with play time reaching 37 minutes and 43 seconds. My favorite track would have to be the fourth track, The Inevitable End, which happens to be the longest track among the six. The riff and anchor melody for that particluar song is extremely melancholic and depressive. It was difficult to not let myself drown in the sorrowful and melancholic mood while listening to The Inevitable End. It does suit the title of the song rather perfectly.
The remaining 5 each have their own gloomy moments that would made you want to stare towards a thousand miles nowhere. Well, maybe the fifth track, November, was a bit out of place eventhough it is still a good track to listen to if you are feeling less melancholic. If you are worried that this album will contain the same riffs looped one thousand times in a song or those extremely slow paced drum beats per minute, then you dont have to worry about that with Torn Beyond Reason because there were various drum patterns incorporated here from blast beats, mid tempo to those droney ultra slow drums to everybodys liking.
I have read somewhere that the main man behind Woods of Desolation, D, took his time to craft this album and to me he did a magnificent job with each and every song in this album. One word to sum the whole album? Breathtaking. Even if you are not a fan of Depressive Black Metal, this album is still worth the experiment. I recommend this.
