Hope Attrition is the latest release from Brooklyn black metal horde Woe, and it comes four years after the very fine album Withdrawal, their last for Candlelight Records. With their new home on Vendetta Records, the band are supercharged and ready to go with this pulverizing set of seven extreme metal songs.
Calling Woe a pure black metal band is somewhat of a stretch, as these guys pack a wealth of death metal elements as well as lots of melody into their music. Chris Grigg (who also sings) and Matt Mewton offer up a never ending assortment of riffs, from raging tremolo picked black metal styled assaults to the more melodic and crushing bombast you normally hear in death metal, it's all here in full force. "No Blood Has Honor" sees the duo raging with plenty of violent intent, Grigg's furious bellows & screams and Lev Weinstein's acrobatic drumming rounding out the frenzied attack quite nicely. While "The Unending Call of Woe" offers up more textures and even dips into somewhat proggy waters, "The Din of the Mourning" is pure, unadulterated black metal, blast beats, agonizing screams, and icy cold riffs cascading over the listener in fine fashion. "Abject in Defeat" also provides for plenty of old school jackhammer blasting, the band really laying everything in their path to waste, and some doom & death metal flavors come out on the epic sounding "The Ones We Lost".
I know it's kind of cliche to state that 'the four years was worth the wait', but it really was. Hope Attrition is a successful return for these US black metal veterans, a finely crafted set of extreme metal songs that sees Woe at the top of their game.
Track Listing
1. Unending Call Of Woe 08:37
2. No Blood Has Honor 06:16
3. A Distant Epitaph 00:49
4. The Din Of The Mourning 07:13
5. The Ones We Lost 07:54
6. Drown Us With Greatness 05:17
7. Abject In Defeat 07:25
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