London’s WREN have been releasing music for over a decade and Black Rain Falls (Church Road Records) is their third full-length record. The band describe it as “a crystallisation of the conceptual voice-giving to natural collapse, humanity’s decline and the shadowed spectre that has imbued WREN since the beginning.” 

Indeed, the music is suitably cathartic. Searing sludge guitar riffs combine with harsh shouted vocals and doom-laden drums. There is a pervasive sense of despair and longing that oozes from every clashing guitar chord and anguished scream. At times the music is terrifyingly explosive.

It is clear from the outset that WREN are not merely a straight-ahead sludge metal band. The seven songs here mostly feature epic and experimental structures. Especially considering that the band have just one guitar player (plus bass, drums and vocals) Black Rain Falls is filled with an impressive array of interesting harmonic content: odd and unusual chords with something of a Jazz influence often find their way into the sludge metal maelstrom. This is perhaps Black Rain Falls’ most impressive feature: the music often twists itself around in directions that are unexpected but that always sound right.

Album highlights include the brutal and bludgeoning riffs towards the end of “Toil in the Undergrowth”, the swirling vortex of discordance at the beginning of “Betrayal of the Self”, the relentlessly driving riffery in the middle of “Metric of Grief”, and the feedback-drenched distorted bass grooves at the beginning of “Scorched Hinds”. That said, the album works superbly to bring the listener on a stirring and dynamic journey through a forbidding and disturbing soundscape of desperation.

Black Rain Falls is a pioneering work of heavy music that avoids tired cliché and keeps the listener gripped and engrossed throughout its harsh and severe passage. It is intense, fearsome, and enthralling. It borrows from a wide variety of styles but always sounds cohesive and distinct. Those with an interest in heavy and experimental music will find that WREN’s latest release offers them plenty to love.

Buy the album here:
https://bfan.link/betrayal-of-the-self

8 / 10
DUNCAN EVANS
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