As always, when I don’t know anything about a band, I like to start by taking a look at the album cover. It this case, it’s all black with drawings in thin white lines. Two centipedes are forming a circle and on top of them there is a horned bat with spread wings, the body of which looks like… Well, I reckon you’ll figure it out. Everything is topped by the band logo, the “i” of which resembles a burning candle. Not bad. My first guess was goth rock or death rock. But, as it turns out, I was wrong.
Wij, as I have learned from their bandcamp page, are a trio from Warsaw, Poland. Maria writes the lyrics and sings, Grzegorz plays the guitar, Miko the drums. They have no bassist and it seems they prefer it that way. Dziwidło is their debut album, containing 10 songs composed by the band, and one Venom cover. It appears that W przymierzu z Diabłem is Polish for In League with Satan.
After a few run-throughs I can say that the band builds their sound on 70s rock and proto-metal. There is a bit of AC/DC to be heard, a bit of Deep Purple, and at times a hint of Motörhead. The vocals are very pronounced, loud and clear, in the forefront of the mix, while guitar and drums, on purpose or not, are rather subdued – which seems a shame, really, because they are pretty good. Maybe the discrepancy is just due to limited possibilities in recording and production?
Since the vocals are so prominent, the listener automatically focuses on them. While strong and convincing, they somehow appear out of genre and oddly unfitting in combination with the music. The initially interesting oddity of the Polish lyrics becomes somewhat tedious after repeated listens, because, without knowing Polish, you simply have no clue what the “wailing female Viking warrior” (band’s bandcamp page) is singing about. “Ancient mysteries”, apparently.
I’m all for local colour, and I like very much that we occasionally get CDs from all corners of the world. In order to review them, however, it does help if there is a little background information about the band and the release sent along with the CDs. Especially, if band name, album title and lyrics are not in English. It’s rather a challenge, otherwise, to make sense of things and to do the release justice. I have a feeling I might have liked this a bit better, had I understood something.
(6/10 Slavica)
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