Wingless is a great name for a band who’ve chained themselves with the heavy links of doom and death. It seems to encapsulate the core reality that human beings struggle to soar, land-bound and crawling toward a bitter end beneath the distant gaze of winged creatures that have always seemed more free.
And yet the new album from this Krakow-based band, their fifth full-length since forming in 2012, is named Ascension. The title raises questions: ascending toward what? and when? and how?
The music suggests answers, though they are likely to vary with each listener’s interpretation of the experience. What’s not likely to vary is the inevitability of becoming submerged in the music, and to rise with it. You’ll have that chance today, as we premiere a full stream of Ascension in advance of its release on April 26th by Selfmadegod Records.
In some of its own core experiences (but not all of them), Ascension is indeed bleak and bitter. Embracing some of the classic traditions of doomed death metal, it seems to stare Death in the face, manifesting that terrible unwavering gaze and the crushing desperation it provokes.
That’s one way of understanding the album opener “The Ascension (After the Light)“, which delivers brutally bludgeoning percussive blows, the cold cruelty of eviscerating riffs that vibrate voraciously, and the imperiousness of gut-deep, gravel-toned growls, as well as wailing fretwork frenzies and the slowly moaning solo in the song, which together channel agony, fear, and hopelessness.
Even in just that one song, it’s evident that Wingless have succeeded in combining punishing power and electrifying ferocity, while also generating an atmosphere of emotional panic, pain, and ultimate desolation — and doing that with a relatively clear production (but not too clear) that allows each performer’s contributions to stand out.
Those same elements stand out in subsequent songs: the subterranean rumbling of the bass lines (laced with nuanced variations); the bone-shaking and skull-rattling beats; the dangerous and dismal throb of the riffing; the cavernous and carnivorous hostility of the crackling gutturals; and penetrating melodies of morbidity and misery.
At times, Wingless torque the turmoil to distressing levels of intensity, with drums blasting, the guitars roiling, ringing, and rising like fountains of severe distress, tormented by forces both sinister and supernatural, which often seem to slither through an inter-dimensional veil through the soloing (for great examples of all this, see “The Soul Raiser” and “Only the Graves Will Remain“, two of the album’s most explosive and exhilarating songs).
As formulations of death/doom go, Ascension is more high-powered and ravaging, more ferociously assaulting, neck-wrecking, and muscle-triggering than many, but at times Wingless do shift down, and open black sinkholes of agony, veined by soloing that oozes grief (for one of those, check out the closing of “From There It’s always Dark“).
Or, to put it another way, as we hear Ascension Wingless are wedded to galvanizing groove (including rocking grooves) and the hard-charging aggressiveness of death metal more so than you might expect from their “death/doom” genre label. Where they earn that “doom” moniker is in many of the ringing and swirling melodies, which make their desolate mark even when the band are simultaneously pounding the hell out of the listener.
To return to where we started: As dark as the music often is, it also often does ascend, capable of sounding defiant and even exultant (“As Long As Others Die” being a prime example). If where we ascend is only toward Death and the mysteries of where Death will bring us (glimpsed in the album’s mesmerizing final instrumental track), it does at least promise a release from the torments of life, or so we might interpret this music.
And if nothing else, the music here is so galvanizing that listening to it is itself a method of ascension (wingless, we can still imagine wings).
Wingless’ founding guitarist/bassist Grzegorz Luzar has stated:
“The new album, Ascension, reveals from the first seconds a conglomerate of heaviness, darkness, and a unique atmosphere particularly clearly reflected in the lyrics. The sonic apocalypse contained in these nine tracks will linger in the memory of anyone who dares to check out what Ascension hides. This album is a consistent realization of the idea of how to play death/doom metal music in 2024 and keep it fresh.”
Now listen:
WINGLESS is:
Grzegorz Luzar – guitars, bass
Michał “Xaay” Loranc – vocals
Piotr Wójcik – drums
Pascal – (live bass)
Ascension will be released on CD and digital platforms by Selfmadegod Records this Friday, April 26th. It’s recommended for fans of Morbid Angel, Benediction, Asphyx, Rippikoulu, and Coffins.
The album was recorded between June and November 2023 at Studio67, produced by Grzegorz Luzar, and it was mixed and mastered by Dominik Burzym at Studio67. It features cover artwork by Rafał Wechterowicz and layout by Michał “Xaay” Loranc.
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