Wells Valley, sounds like it could be somewhere in Texas or maybe a leafy gated community in deepest, darkest most expensive Surrey. Nope the band who have adopted this particular moniker reside in Portugal and play what they describe as post metal and sludge. They list everyone on their biog from Nine Inch Nails, to Blut Aus Nord and even Ved Buens Ende so obviously have further reach than the obvious ones such as Neurosis and Cult Of Luna who naturally get a mention too. With six tracks on the album it’s a case of having a few listens and letting them grow on me and see if I can join up the dots and come up with my own opinion.
Some great sliding and apocalyptic guitar work on opener ‘Ghost Of You’ has me putting my Anarcho punk head on and thinking of Amebix and Conflict before the tracks spreads out and gets into a fluttering groove. There’s some technical and mesmerising guitar work here that reminds a fair bit of early Mastodon and Gojira and some spoken vocal parts making it all quite atmospheric as well as very modern sounding. As things rise and the vocals get coarser and more angry I’m nodding head along and looking to see if someone such as Albini or Plotkin had mixed and mastered and although not this has the sort of sound I would expect from them and it is the sort of album that I reckon could fit quite easily on the Relapse roster. It’s quite a meandering track and sets up nicely for what is to come, somehow though it gives the impression that they have yet to fully take the brakes off. This they do with ‘Star Over A Wheel’ which batters in more brutally with some jagged riffing and then goes into a proggy sort of sound that kind of reminds of ‘Astronomy Domine’ however this is not the Pink Floyd version but more akin to the Voivod one especially when Filipe Correia unleashes his full vocal rage as there is more than a touch of Eric Forrest about it. After a somewhat cheeky but memorably hooky track, doom and distemper combine on the bellicose hollering of ‘Hands Are Void.’ It’s hefty but also quite heavily melodic with the guitars limbering away with a post Indie sort of feel whilst the vocals scream and rage. There’s plenty of meat to get your teeth into here and the album is proving that each of the tracks has own sense of identity.
The album is definitely a grower even if it is one that I really didn’t find myself appreciating at first. The compact 38 minute running time has definitely helped its cause as has the variety of sound going on and I guess everyone will identify different things within it. There’s some real choppy fretwork and good time changes on ‘Plead For Light’ and here the instrumental section really comes into its own with a somewhat schizophrenic flurry but one that gels completely. Last track ‘Kingdom Of Salvation’ is as fast and furious as the likes of Lord Mantis and Shining (Norway) and takes off like the clappers strumming like an unleashed tornado. This would give you a good slap around the face live and does a pretty good job of it on disc too. Wells Valley, not a place that I would settle down but I was more than interested to stop a while when passing through.
(7/10 Pete Woods)
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