Review by Mandeep Arora on April 21, 2024.

Woods of Ypres may not be a household name in the regular metal circles but they seem well-revered in the underground scene. I've seen a lot of love in comments and reviews alike and majority of that can be attributed to this album, their last and also their best. By a mile. I was not familiar with the band's previous work and the name came across as slightly odd initially (how do you pronounce Ypres?) but it was the artwork that intrigued me, somehow perfectly embodying the sheer and utter hopelessness this album conveys.

Laughably, when I first listened to it, I leapt in expecting an unreservedly doom metal sound with chunky and majestic riffs dawdling along for an hour straight and wonky lyrics straight out of an old-school fantasy novel. Surprisingly, and pleasantly so, it was anything but. Yes, it does qualify as doom to an extent, evident in certain riffs and song structuring but it's also pretty fast in sections and the songs don't sound wholly morose; I'd say the last four songs best fit its doom metal credentials, by which point even the album slows down considerably from the slightly faster pace it had set up earlier. Hints of their black metal past, which does not sound like your conventional black metal to begin with, are seldom present and mostly observed on Adora Vivos. You can tell the songs apart due to their defined song structures that mostly consist of verses and choruses - not the most exciting prospect to a certain audience as they don't like their metal "predictable", but trust me, it works very well in the album's favour.

Production's pretty strong and you can distinguish the instruments well enough. The guitars sound clear and punchy and you can make out and enjoy the melodies playing on top of the riffs, but not so much the bass. The solos sound rather joyful but the added element of keyboards and pianos does make it seem a little sorrowful at times. The drums may not excite but they are serviceable and loud enough. David Gold and Joel Violette have a nearly equal say in songwriting and they take turns in shaping up the album, which lends it a fantastic flow. Gold's occasional growls can catch you off-guard at first but they don't overwhelm the experience. The real highlight, however, is when he sings cleanly - a deep, deep baritone that's sublime on choruses or even when he simply reads the lyrics. It's reminiscent of Peter Steele's vocal style, except less sensuous but with a personality all its own. His vocals, along with the lyrics, substantially impart the album its gloomy vibe of agonising and everlasting solitude, much more than what the instruments achieve with their sound.

Ah, the lyrics... A stark reminder that life can be hellish, nasty, brutish and brief, as though written by someone who's completely losing in life. Because I have been through a phase such as this before, I can attest how legitimate and scary the feeling is when it seems impossible to extricate yourself from defeatism. My particular favourite example here is Modern Life Architecture, which talks about a man's struggle to meet societal standards and expectations and accepting his failure at it - almost poetic in its writing, it imparts a deeply crushing feeling that's compounded by the intensity of its majestic intro of profound bell sounds and super-heavy riffs, like the tumbling down of walls of desperation on you, slowly and intimidatingly, and rendering you completely helpless. It fascinates me to think if Gold was going through any of this; his tragic accident when seen in conjunction with the lyrics on Alternate Ending makes me wonder if he oversaw things coming, or maybe intended to do things he was writing about. We'll never know.

It's a shame we'll never get another Woods of Ypres album, Gold's tragic and untimely passing putting the lid on what could have been some very interesting follow-up material. Admittedly, I haven't been a fan of their previous stuff, which is overbearingly pompous and uninteresting at best. In comparison, Woods 5 is an absolute wonder and a modern metal classic - the vision shines through on every song and there's always something to woo you, be it the guitars or vocals or lyrics. It's such a polished and refined sound, I think even the non-metal audience can enjoy it; it's very accessible that way and all the better for it.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Review by George on March 2, 2020.

When it comes to hopelessness in metal, there's a few subgenres that immediately spring to mind. For me, it's depressive black metal and funeral doom at the forefront for bleakness, with maybe some of the more despairing releases of raw black and drone behind. Gothic metal would scarcely even be remembered, let alone considered. And yet there exists an album called Woods 5: Grey Skies and Electric Light, a sixty-minute experience so utterly devoid of joy it actually manages to eat away at my own determination, drive and purpose every time I listen to it.

There's many different approaches to conveying despair in music; bands like Sunn O))) do it through suffocating, droning dissonance while other acts like Advent Sorrow and Wormphlegm rely on tortured, shrieking vocals to drive their agony into you. Woods of Ypres, on the other hand, go for a much more simplistic approach. They employ slow but assonant melodies, giving the beginning of the album a deceptively happy tone, then contrast it with David's vocals, which could never in a million years be called happy. He uses both high, blackened screams and monotonous baritone singing (at times almost spoken-word) to great effect, conveying the numbness that comes with depression perfectly. The joyful instruments on the surface combined with sad lyrics make for a pretty on-the-nose metaphor for hiding your sadness behind a smile, but it works.

It's actually a running theme on the album: things that seem juvenile or immature from an outside perspective just work. The reason for lies with album's greatest strength - the knowledge that it's completely genuine. Lyrics that objectively have no more intricacy or depth than the stuff Three Days Grace have been churning out recently ("I only had one life to live, and life said no"? Really?) hit much harder purely due to the knowledge that they're a real expression of real feelings. Hearing a dead man talk about death so plainly is both harrowing and eye-opening, especially on tracks like 'Death is Not an Exit' and 'Kiss My Ashes (Goodbye)'. It's an insight into the mind of someone who's truly given up all hope, who's been ground down by an unfair, nonsensical world, and the conviction with which he tells his story makes it feel so real that it's bound to get into your head at least a little.

On the opposite end of the spectrum to those gothic, doom-y tracks we have the faster, more upbeat, more hopeful side of the album, most notably 'Career Suicide (Is Not Real Suicide)', but even here, where the instruments are uplifting and melodic and the lyrics seem to take a pretty standard inspirational theme, there are signs that not everything is alright. The stream of consciousness style repetition of the chorus, for instance, feels like someone desperately trying to convince themselves that what they're saying is true, that there's still hope for them in life, and so even the joyful, happy songs have a dark and sinister undertone. There's no relief to be found on Woods 5.

As you've probably guessed by this point, David Gold was not in a good state of mind when he wrote this album. The exact circumstances of his death still elude us, but the content of this album gives me a horrible feeling that the car crash which ended his life might just have not been accidental. It's a nagging suspicion that persists throughout the record but truly comes to fruition in the last two tracks. I'll be honest, despite braving a listen for the first time in years to write this review, I didn't have the mettle to listen to that pair of songs again. They're far too raw and the lyrics link to his death far too well for me to stomach (especially on 'Alternate Ending'), and as a result they're some of the best tracks on here even though I'm going to make a conscious effort to never hear them again.

To conclude, Woods 5 is a fascinating yet haunting swansong for David Gold, ironically standing as a monument to him and his legacy despite his opposition to having either of those things. It's something you appreciate not for the intricacy or artistry but for the rawness of emotion expressed, the kind of album you'll only want to experience once but you'll end up thinking about for years to come afterwards. This is about as far from easy-listening as you can get, so much so that I've come to a decision: after giving this release the acknowledgement and high score that it deserves, I'm never listening to it again.

Rating: 9.6 out of 10

Review by Fernando on February 6, 2023.

While Alvaro Lillo is better known as the bassist of Watain, he’s also a veteran of the Chilean extreme metal scene, as he fronted acts like Undercroft and Execrator. However, today we’re talking about his black metal project Xalpen, and the band’s sophomore record, The Curse Of Kwányep, released by Black Lodge Records.

Xalpen (pronounced HAL-pen), was formed in 2014 by the aforementioned Alvarlo Lillo aka Tarem-Keláash, and Juan Pablo Nuñez aka Keykrók. The two are the band’s masterminds, songwriters and vocalists. They first made themselves known with 2 excellent EP’s before releasing their debut record Sawken Xo'on (Three Shamans) in 2020, which they remastered and re-released a year later through Black Lodge Records.

The band’s style of black metal is very interesting as it’s a blend of Chilean extreme metal and second wave black metal, which then coalesces together with the band’s ritualistic convictions, as they sing about Satanism and indigenous Shamanism. In practice, their style of black metal has a very vintage sound, death-thrash riffs and drumming, but with the cold and ominous melodicism and wailing vocals of classic black metal, which the band then enhances with Shamanic chanting and ritualistic atmospheres. And this is still the case for this record, however, unlike their EP’s which were a bit rough around the edges, and their debut which felt very uniform in execution, The Curse Of Kwányep is a significant improvement, while still staying true to the sound they crafted for themselves with their first recordings.

The production is one of the major improvements and while Xalpen never had the raw production of most black metal bands, it was somewhat inconsistent (the fact they remastered and re-released their debut is a good example). In The Curse Of Kwányep that's no longer the case, as all the instruments and vocals sound very clear and are properly mixed so that they work in unison and without overshadowing each other. Furthermore, the band’s songwriting has significantly improved, and they’ve never had bad songwriting to begin with. One of my issues with their previous efforts was how uniform they were, but on this new record the band successfully balance keeping things fresh and dynamic while maintaining sonic consistency from beginning to end, not to mention, each song is distinct while still feeling like a part of the whole album. Furthermore, this record is much more melodic than previous efforts, but it’s also darker and more intense. Keykrók’s riffs succeed in having that distinct Chilean death-thrash crunch and groove, while also displaying the more piercing and hypnotic cold melodies of black metal, which are then the natural foil to Tarem-Keláash’s overwhelming bass lines. All in all, a well crafted and balanced string section.

The band has had many members, and on this record the band has a new drummer, Claudio Muñoz aka Koch-Keul, who is not only an excellent drummer, but manages to fit the band like a glove. He displays the mandatory blast beats and brutality, but where he truly shines is in his tribal drumming (with the exception of the penultimate track ‘Moon-Woman’ where the drums are played by E. Forcas, also of Watain and Degial). So even if Xalpen is by and large Tarem-Keláash and Keykrók’s band, they certainly didn’t spared no expenses in getting a suitable drummer.

There’s really very little to complain about. The band succeeded in improving their shortcomings of their previous work, and are able to refine their own unique sound. The only minor gripe I have is with their cover of 'Diabolica' by Angeles Del Infierno, which is only featured on the CD version of the record so it’s a moot complaint. That being said, it does feel jarring to go from a very dark and intense black metal record, to a classic heavy metal track, but again, minor gripe and with a CD exclusive bonus track.

Best tracks: 'The Curse Of Kwányep (Kwányep Chenen)', 'Kash Wayèwèn Qèr (The Deep Speaking Of The Spirits)', 'Moon-Woman (Kre´-Naa)'

Rating: 8.7 out of 10