July 2008 • Stronghold Records
Sometimes you want something fresh, original, brand-new; and then other times you just want to hear the same old stuff and enjoy something that will sound familiar. If that's the case, Woe is definitely bringing it. It's by-the-books black metal, but with a quality you don't get much these days.
Woe's debut A Spell for the Death of Man is very straightforward black metal, more or less in the same vein as the second-wave Norwegian bands of the '90s—lots of tremolo guitars, blastbeats, and the occasional groovy riffing. A Spell... reminds me a bit of earlier Darkthrone or Emperor, traditional black metal with a bit of a thrashy edge (good comparisons to make, of course). Speaking of blastbeats, I have to mention that this album has some of the best drumming I've heard from a one-man band—it's not synthesized, for once, and there's something about its sound I really like. Maybe it's those snare-heavy fills or something; there's something very satisfying about them.
But if A Spell... has the advantage of having something of a "canonical" black metal sound, it has the same thing as a disadvantage. While the songs are pretty good, the performances are very solid, and it is fun to listen to, ultimately there isn't much to remember it by. Each song is more or less the same thing, so after about three of them I begin to get a bit fatigued as the album slowly gets more monotonous. For a quick fix of one or two songs at a time, it definitely hits the spot like no other, but listening to the whole album all the way through (even at a reasonable forty-three minutes) gets to be a bit of a chore when it's the same thing over and over again, even if I do like it.
However, again, it's still a fun album to listen to and it is good (good enough for me to want to look into Woe's newer album). It simply doesn't have a lot of lasting power. But while it does, it's definitely worth a listen or two, especially for any fans of that older, traditional black metal sound.
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