This is the debut album from Widow’s Peak, a band which has been around since 2016. Technical progressive death metal is the declared style.
It’s for fans of Beyond Creation, Atheist and Gorguts, they say. Yep. The opener is a disarming warm up. Lift-off happens with the deathly, growly, twisty title song. This is death metal alright, with little jazzy tweaks and lots of aggression. “Implements of Hell” continues in fast and hard mode. Figurative smoke comes off the guitars. The juggernaut resumes with “The Worming Hour”. The essential pattern is the same: forward-driving death metal, but I did appreciate the spiralling solo and can’t fault the energy, menace or musicianship of this. Little experimental incursions add interest, but Widow’s Peak fail to develop their ideas, preferring to return to technical crash – bang – wallop. “Monochrome” brings extra excitement in this regard towards the end, mysteriously stopping but then getting back to core business. And core death business is what “Pillars of Failure” is, complete with a bit of axe carnage at the end.
Fast-paced, “Charlatans of Industry” races on with urgency. Technical sparks fly. It stops and slows down, but the breakdowns signal resumption to the deathly vision, punctuated by the technical rhythms. Just as I was writing off “Thrombosis” as more of the same, it ends with a really impressive breakdown – more of this, please. But we’re running out of time. “Heartworms I Aorta” steams on in customary fashion, breaking away with an invigorating solo and then a colourful and evocative passage, which for once Widow’s Peak allow us to absorb and enjoy, and I most certainly did. Finally I felt connected to and indeed inside what Widow’s Peak were doing. “Heartworms II Vena Cava” went back to the usual line of attack, briefly exploring an idea before rushing headlong amid technical dexterity to the end. A delicately moody outro “When the Last Leaf Wilts” closes the album, and pleasant as it was, seemed to bear no relation to the rest of it in the way that a bonus track sometimes does.
For me, Widow’s Peak relied too heavily on the technical instrumental work to make this album interesting, defaulting too often and too quickly to a similar brand of death metal, which for sure was competent and brutal but which followed a repetitive pattern. There were variations, which when adopted were done well but mostly they were too brief. That’s something to be worked on for the future maybe, but for now I’d say that “Claustrophobe” is a decent death metal album with plenty of energy about it but also with limitations.
(6.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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