White Ward were one of the bands for whom the pandemic could not have come at a worse moment. Their absorbing last LP Love Exchange Failure, released in the autumn of 2019, fusing lounge jazz with black metal, had left critics and audiences impressed and hooked. The music, which employed piano, saxophone and brushed drums to conjure up urban, noir settings and contrasted it with passages of furious, raging sound, offered a peculiar mixture of moods. It was depressive and pessimistic, yet did not ignore or deny occasional beautiful moments. The album, together with a number of successful shows played around Europe, earned the band an invitation to Roadburn 2020. Things were looking really good for the Ukrainians. And then the virus hit.
For a while, it got quiet around the band. External difficulties were followed by an accident. The band’s guitarist and main composer Yurii Kazarian suffered a major fracture to his arm having to had it fixed with a titanium plate. That, of course, meant no guitar playing for quite some time.
Yet through all of this the band continued working on new material. Now, things are somewhat back on track. White Ward are playing shows again, at least in their native Ukraine, and are busy finishing their third full-length album. To shorten the wait, the band together with their label have released a two-track EP titled Debemur Morti (Latin for “we are death”). French label Debemur Morti Productions have been the band’s travelling companion since their first full-length Futility Report (2017) and are celebrating their 200th release with this EP.
The two tracks, titled Debemur Morti and Embers, have a runtime of just over 17 minutes. The EP’s cover shows a photo of a run-over deer, bleeding onto white snow, the car tire still wrapped around it – a fitting image to go with the EP title, harbouring a clear message: We, the humans, bring death to nature. Track number one Debemur Morti starts out slow, with velvety saxophone sounds and piano. The drumming quickly picks up speed, and two minutes into the track you can enjoy the raging chaos of merciless drumming paired with tremolo-picked guitars and subdued, screamed vocals. So far, so good, so White Ward. Somewhere around the middle of the track, however, there is a break, everything slows down, and then guest vocalist Lars Nedland of Solefald and Borknagar joins in with dramatic, clean, soaring vocals. And it’s like you’ve been transported to another universe – one that’s home to more traditional subgenres of metal. A big question mark formed over my head when I heard Debemur Morti for the first time, and it has reappeared with every new run through. Luckily, second track Embers returns to more familiar terrain, revisiting the setting and the atmosphere the band is known for.
On their new EP, titled after their label and marking its 200th release, White Ward experiment with incorporating a broader spectrum of metal into their noir-shaded soundscapes, including clean, more traditional-sounding vocals. If you’re a fan of the latter and of guest vocalist Lars Nedland, you will probably like this excursion into a different terrain. I might need a bit more time to familiarize myself with it.
(7/10 Slavica)
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