WHITE WARD — Illusions (review)

WHITE WARD — Illusions album cover EP · 2012 · Depressive Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
siLLy puPPy
Amongst the wealth of black metal bands coming from around the world, perhaps no other nation has captured the bleakest sounds better than the Ukraine. For some reason this region of the world is just teeming with lo-fi angst-ridden doomsday-seeking musicians dwelling on as much misanthropy, horror and depression as humanly possible. WHITE WARD is one of countless black metal bands from Ukraine which formed in Odessa in 2012.

WHITE WARD wasted no time cranking out a couple demos and this debut EP titled ILLUSIONS which fits the textbook definition of depressive black metal on its way to post-black and blackgaze terrain. While the band would eventually meander into atmospheric black metal, on ILLUSIONS they fall squarely in the depressive aisle of the metal supermarket on the shelf next to Sweden’s Shining and the San Francisco based Leviathan but not really quite as accomplished in the creativity department.

At this stage the lineup was Alexey Sidorenko (vocals), Vladimir Bauer (bass), Yuiry Konoov (drums), Yuriy Kazaryan (guitars) and Alexander Smirnov (guitars). This EP only has three lengthy tracks but the playing time still just misses the 25 minute mark. While the band has been getting more attention in recent years for adding jazz elements to its blackgaze haziness, at this stage WHITE WARD was pretty much a standard nondescript sounding depressive black metal band.

The repetitive monotonous chugging guitar riffs, apathetic drums and melodic wailing guitar parts in the background are like the musical equivalent to a suicide note as the vocals growl away beneath the depressive banter of the guitar distortion and mid-tempo rhythmic drive. Overall ILLUSIONS is a decent slice of depressive black metal but also falls squarely into generic mediocrity as there is absolutely nothing on this one that makes WHITE WARD stand out from its more famous Western European contemporaries. Still though if you can’t get enough of this style of black metal, it’s certainly not a waste of time either.
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