WOE UNTO ME — A Step into the Waters of Forgetfulness (review)

WOE UNTO ME — A Step into the Waters of Forgetfulness album cover

Album · 2014 · Funeral Doom Metal

4/5 · 2024-02-14
siLLy puPPy

Funeral doom metal has become the slowcore genre of the metal universe with its snail-paced guitar stomps, lugubrious atmospheres and provides the ultimate downer music for a world in perpetual crisis. So many bands have gotten in on the act that started so long ago and from every part of the world too. WOE UNTO ME comes from the unexpected setting of Grodno, Belarus and formed in 2007. This band followed in the footsteps of Esoteric, Evoken, Mournful Congregation and so many others and debuted in 2014 with A STEP INTO THE WATERS OF FORGETFULNESS.

In many ways a typical funeral doom offering, WOE UNTO ME’s debut features sprawling tracks, five in this case with the majority close to 10 minutes or more. It also spreads out to a near hour’s listening time at just over 54 minutes. Gloomy, restless atmosphere darken the skies while guitar stomps provide a jagged contrast with heavy distortion and rarely deviate from power chords. Likewise the bass and drums simply lollygag to the tenebrous procession with nothing but time to pass painfully slow but with musical accompaniment.

Typical in many ways for sure but WOE UNTO ME is a bit different than other funeral doom bands as it employs not one but three vocal styles. Primarily the clean male vocals of Sergey Puchok but also the harsh growls of guitarist / drummer / keyboardist Artyom Serdyok. And if that wasn’t enough the feminine charm of Julia Shimanovskaya is added to spice things up even further. The band is a sextet with bassist Ivan Skrundevskiy, guitarist / drummer / keyboardist Dzmitry Shchyhilinski and keyboardist Olga Apisheva rounding things out. With three keyboardists in the mix, you’d better believe this is an atmospheric one.

The 13-minute opener “Slough Of Despond” sets the tone for the jaggedly depressive album with a series of competing atmospheric constructs and a deranged piano roll slowly and at glacial speed finally giving way to the death doom metal extravaganza that comprises the majority of the album. The growly vocals aren’t as prevalent as one would expect with the clean vocals making themselves quite at home but in the end it actually works out quite well because the established atmospheres and choppy guitar parts deliver all the gloom and doom needed for this funeral scene. The closing 14 minute closer “Angels To Die” is perhaps the most melancholic track to exist.

The tracks are about as mournful as you can get as WOE UNTO ME perfectly manufactures the perfect melancholic atmospheres with the right amount of metal and because of the richness of the neoclassical darkwave that accompanies the guitars, bass and drums, the band has excelled in making a really effective slice of funeral doom metal. Too many of these bands sound alike but this one managed to stand out from the very beginning. WOE UNTO ME seemed to summon the very melancholy that the nation of Belarus has endured as a collective especially after having lost so many of its inhabitants in the last century to so many tyrants. It’s almost a genetic given that such an album could emerge from one of the largest funeral graves on the planet.