We find ourselves in an unusual but not unheard-of situation at our site: featuring the music of a band we know almost nothing about other than the music we can hear.
In this instance the band’s name is Woe Bearer. It is a duo consisting of H., who performed guitars and bass, programmed the drums, wrote the lyrics, and mixed and mastered the recording, and T., the vocalist. We don’t know where they’re from or anything about their backgrounds.
They’ve recorded a debut album named Thriving Within the Absurdity of the Human Plight, which will be released on digital and tape formats by Onism Productions on August 23rd.
And that’s what we know… apart from the startling music you’re also about to hear now.
The Woe Bearer song we’re premiering is “Rotten Tongue“. It is a fashioning of black metal that’s as raw and unsettling as a vision of a skinned child, yet flowers into other mystifying, morbid, and malignant marvels that become too head-spinning to fully take in with one listen.
The guitars are tuned to the whine of a circle saw at full throttle, but they wail like the pulse of massed air-raid sirens splintering the air. The drums don’t allow any settling either, rapidly shifting without warning from maniacal blasts and rapid tumbles to staggering lurches.
Against that backdrop you’ll hear shattering screams pitched to the torturous extremity of burn victims, and the echoing of gargantuan deathly roars seemingly fueled by hate and disgust alone.
But the music is far more colorful than the bleached barrenness of the album’s cover art. As the pace slows and the drums tumble and pound, the bass thrums and the chords methodically slash and shimmer, cruel and imperious, and the warping and wailing strings begin to seem more mystical.
The guitars create density and diversion, grittiness and bell-like clarity (fractured bells, to be sure), sensations of immensity and convulsion, an ebb and flow of misery and madness. Brittle clanging tones trade places with shrill screeching eruptions, mesmerizing chimes, and the persistence of wails.
The vocals continue trading places as well, underscoring both the oppressiveness and the derangement in the surrounding sounds.
For what might be called “raw black metal,” there’s a lot more going on here than you might expect, so much that it will leave most listeners wide-eyed (those who haven’t been scared away) and intrigued, driven to run through this a few more times to better comprehend what has happened.
Woe Bearer do indeed seem to be thriving within the absurdity of the human plight.
It will be interesting to learn what else this album holds in store. Onism will release the it on white cassette tape in a clear case with a pro-printed J-card, limited to 50 copies, and it will be available as a digital download too. You’ll be able to place orders via the links below.
ORDER:
https://onismproductions.bandcamp.com/album/thriving-within-the-absurdity-of-the-human-plight
https://shop.onism.productions/search?q=woe+bearer
ONISM SOCIALS:
https://www.facebook.com/onism.productions
https://www.instagram.com/onism.productions