Wound – Inhale the Void (FDA Rekotz)
Wednesday, 21st August 2013
Obvious statement for the day: Things in metal work differently in Europe. Case in point, German death metal horde Wound received “Demo of the Month” honors from revered Rock Hard magazine, no doubt translating into their deal with FDA Rekotz. We have no such honors here in the States, and even if we did, it would probably go to some scraggly young deathcore band who can play a handful of arpeggios but couldn’t write a song if you sat them down with Steely Dan. Nicely done, German metal scene.
Inhale the Void is the title of the band’s debut, and it parlays the now all-too-common regressive death metal stance into ten largely ordinary songs. There’s not a post-1993 idea in the lot, and with the relentless d-beat posturing and frazzled screams of the band’s vocalist (no band member names are listed in their bio or social media sites – how secretive!), a lot of what is presented on Inhale the Void is the by-product of Swedish death metal and to a lesser degree, the current influx of crust-core bands. However, the grooves on “Forever Denial” have suitable amounts of filth in their innards, while the Slayer-ized “Corroded From Within” and doom sprawl of “The Prince of Tyranny” are marginally interesting.
A band such as Wound unfortunately, has no other place to go than the margins, really. How these guys got high marks in Rock Hard is anyone’s guess; perhaps the staff there took power metal off the turntables for a day and stumbled upon these gents. Who knows.
