By: Daniel Jackson
Album Type: Full Length
Date
Released: 14/02/2017
Label: Vendetta
Records
‘Split
1). Whitehorse -
2). Upyr - Rise
of the Mighty Tyrant
3). Upyr - Webs
of Sorrow
The Review:
At
about half way through the song, the emotional vibe changes gears and the song
becomes more melancholy and sorrowful. Accompanied by pensive strings, the song
shifts its character, but remains tied to the music that leads up to it through
its glacially slow tempo. The songs begins to dissipate, as layers are stripped
away until the last bit of noise is snuffed out, like someone blowing out a
candle. Preferences being what they are, Whitehorse
Upyr’s material
is a bit more out there. “Rise
of the Mighty Tyrant” begins as something of a traditional 80s doom
song. The riff is slow but buoyant, with something of straight up rock n’ roll
personality. But after that, the songs vary between sludge and a southern-style
variation of it, doom, and even black metal. To say that vocalist Brodnik tries
around a dozen or so vocal styles over the course of the Upyr’s 21
minutes of album time would not be an exaggeration. That they pull all of this
off reasonably well is pretty damned impressive, but also gets to the heart of
why I prefer Whitehorse
To
put it bluntly: Upyr puts out a vibe that they’re more interested in
trying things out for the sake of having fun than they are in putting together
something that always plays to their strengths as musicians and performers.
There’s nothing wrong with that mindset, but it also risks the end result being
a hit or miss experience. That’s what this is. There’s a lot of cool shit going
on here, but some of it falls short of what they were aiming for.
Upyr’s strong
suit is as a heavy, rhythmically diverse black and doom metal band with a hint
of mid-90s goth metal as they are towards the end of “Rise of the Mighty Tyrant”
and again in the very early and then later half of “Webs of Sorrow”.
Embracing those strengths going forward would give them plenty to occupy
themselves with creatively, while focusing on what they’re best at when jumping
from style to style.
When
considered as a whole, there are a lot more that hits rather than misses, and
the album rewards you throughout. There’s something to be said for contrasting
a band so orthodox and sure of themselves against a band that with a partial
identity crisis; though you could argue that Upyr’s constant genre hopping and vocal histrionics ARE
its identity, which is fair. But between each band, there more than enough here
to warrant a solid recommendation. There’s just too much that works overall to
be denied.
“Whitehorse/Upyr”
is available here
Band info: Whitehorse Facebook || Upyr Facebook
