The Wretched End started life in 2008 as a collaboration between Emperor/Zyklon’s Samoth, Cosmo of Mindgrinder and ex-Dark Funeral sticksman Nils Fjellström. Second full-length ‘Inroads’ is a very straightforward album, a mechanical mash-up of sharp and clinical blackened DM riffs and melodic thrash tangents worked around a backbone of crunchy, chugging grooves.
The sound is highly polished, both clean and decidedly punchy, allowing the stripped-down-and-powerful riffs to hit their mark every time. It all feels highly professional, belying the experience of its creators, but is put together in a decidedly poppy, cut-and-paste way that can feel at odds with its sonic intensity. Or to put it another way, it has a mainstream palatability about it that will cause some to dismiss it as regular groove metal dressed up in extreme metal clothing.
And it *is* groove metal by and large, albeit framed by plenty of highly convincing precision-clattering and a powerful guitar sound that’s too polished to be called truly raw but nevertheless has a satisfyingly serrated kick to it. It’s still a very commercial take on extreme metal though, with simplistic, highly accessible song structures and plenty of great big, downtuned riffs thrown in amongst the tremolo-laced blasting. ‘Tyrant of the Mountain’ for example switches from a squeaky-clean, blackened-DM gallop into a massive, half-time breakdown, whilst ‘Death by Nature’ is full of highly catchy Lamb of God-esque mid-paced chugging and regular interjections of anthemic shouting . ‘Cold Iron Soul’ meanwhile starts off sounding like a rawer White Zombie, some Pantera-esque grooves thrown in later on, whilst ‘The Haunting Ground’ brings to mind a polished-up ‘Where the Slime Lives’ played at double-speed. Samples regularly appear throughout, in the rather tired form of air-raid sirens, film sound-bytes and half-garbled radio messages.
‘Inroads’ offers up no surprises, with nothing deep or sophisticated going on to be gleaned from repeat listens. On the flip side though everything is executed to a very high standard, whilst the riffs themselves are not bad at all, be they tearing along with machinelike ferocity or locked into some instantly catchy chug-loop. The album feels like something of a halfway house between modern mainstream metal and extreme metal proper, and by its own populist ideals it succeeds, making for a gratifying and enjoyable, if ultimately throwaway listen. The tracks on ‘Inroads’ are perfectly suited to sinking a few beers to at metal bar; a backdrop rather than the main event, but enjoyable all the same.
(6.5/10 Erich Zann)
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