Manchester’s savage sons Wode return with their fourth album, ‘Uncrossing The Keys’, marking a confident expansion of their already formidable sound built upon a shadowy foundation of feral black metal and ironclad heavy metal heft. Having evolved from the more straightforward methodology of the debut album, Wode has continuously added elements from various dark corners of the underground across its discography, with songwriting that has grown leaner yet more intricate, focused and melodic than ever. ‘Uncrossing The Keys’ hasn’t softened Wode’s music, the sound remains steeped in flame and fury, but they’ve embraced a wider spectrum of moods, painting with blacker, richer hues than ever before. Jagged post-punk / goth leanings bleakly shine on new tracks like ‘Saturn Shadow’ and the dreamy trance of atmospheric instrumental ‘Phantom’. The doomier pace and majestically pensive mood of single ‘Transmutation’ recalls both Paradise Lost and Amorphis with its somber undercurrent, while the morosely anthemic ‘Under Lanternlight’ is suffused with dynamic melodies in its Sentenced-like composition style. Guitars carry a mournful shimmer at times, their hooks laced with both melancholy and menace, drifting above the carnage with moments of elegiac beauty and dark lamentation. The hellish rasp of the vocals rise like ritual chants from another age. Conjuring visions of a world perpetually on the edge of twilight Wode casts a long, cold silhouette over the course of ‘Uncrossing The Keys’ nine tracks. There’s a sense of both grandeur and decay, as though the band opened a gateway to a realm where cursed cities smolder under blood-red skies, their walls echoing forsaken hymns eternally. The result of a constant evolutionary process Wode has crafted a truly haunted and commanding blackened heavy metal that raises a dark banner high over a vast and desolate kingdom.
