Wreathe The Land Is Not An Idle God
- Format
12 Inch
Black
£17.00
‘Tears, the blood, the sweat, Quotas filled when all are shed, The labours gone unacknowledged, Shackles grimly greased, The only residue of their toil’ (Mother Of All Woe)
Featuring members of Fall of Efrafa, Morrow, and Arboricidio, this is the debut LP from London’s Wreathe. The band build vigorously on the foundations of those three bands – roared, sometimes layered, vocals entwine in raucous tandem with darkly lean melancholic riffage and a thunderous rhythm section. A palpable rage courses through the sonic onslaught, but it is matched with a defiant optimism that, if we act collectively, all is not yet lost.
The album’s lyrics are based on vocalist Alex CF’s book, The Book of Venym: An Egalitarian Demonology. This is a fictional exploration of the philosophy and invocation of a pantheon of pagan nature deities, known as the Increscent, ‘a battle cry for the much-beleaguered idea of compassion above self-interest and bigotry’. It examines humanity’s deteriorating relationship with nature and how this is in turn then reflected in its fracturing relationship with itself through the privileging of individualism over the collective good.
This provides the album with a powerfully unifying momentum as the narrative unfurls and the philosophical tenets of the book are vigorously animated. The slow build eruption of opener One Hundred Swords Of Righteous Anger sets the tone perfectly, the album then melding bristling rage with discordant melody (Green Messiah, The King Is Risen) and powerful slabs of doom drenched bleakness (Enemy Of All Reason, The Stumps Are Graves Of The Land) with equal relish. The visceral Mother Of All Woe brings proceedings to an utterly crushing finale.
This is the European pressing from Alerta Antifascista Records.