Woe
Hope Attrition
(Vendetta Records)
Philadelphia’s Woe spent the last two years aggressively demoing and applying strict standards of quality control to the material they’ve been writing, and this attention to detail is evident in the seven tracks of vitriolic black metal collected on Hope Attrition. Both the artist’s name and the title given to this album, the group’s first new release in four years, adequately describe what can be found in these songs: the sonic embodiment of all that is bleak and squalid, tempered with just-clear-enough production and well defined riffs. Boasting guitars that are as thick as they are abrasive, and restrained drums, Hope Attrition is a finely tuned combination of the discordance of traditional black metal with the melodic focus and structure of the more modern black metal movements (“Cascadian”/atmospheric).
That being said, the themes of this album are pointedly more morbid and miserable than some of the bands referred to in the latter part of the above statement – if the caustic vocals weren’t enough of an indicator, lyrics of isolation, tales of scavengers of the waste of humanity, and lamentations of regret might tip you off that there is absolutely nothing uplifting about this album.
While wallowing in despair, you might find the self-referential opening track, the first song released and the album’s strongest track, “Unending Call of Woe” to be a great listen, blending a strong tremolo picked melody with tempo and groove changes that are, dare I say, fun. The speed and higher vocals betray a definite thrashy punk influence that brings something more to the table than your standard black metal fare. The phased guitar lead into in “The Ones We Lost” and the ending riff of “Abject In Defeat” are some other great moments on this record.
Take everything about USBM and some of the UK Candlelight bands (Woe’s old label) of the past couple years, throw them in a blender, sprinkle in some of that unique East Coast US isolation, and you get the mass of anguish that is Woe’s Hope Attrition.
