The Wretched End | ‘Inroads’

Did you happen to notice that Zyklon broke up a couple of years ago?

You wouldn’t be much to blame if you didn’t. It was a quiet event that totally passed this reviewer by.

The Wretched End is the vehicle that ex-Zyklon and Emperor guitarist Samoth has been using to fulfill his need to play fast, clinical and vaguely emperial-sounding metal since the demise of that band.

Also featuing Zkylon vocalist Dark Funeral drummer Nills Fjellström and bassist Cosmo from Mindgrinder/Zyklon, this is their second release via Samoth’s label, Nocturnal Arts.

It’s worth quickly appraising Zyklon here. In their day mid 2000s (with the possible exception of their enjoyable debut, ‘World ov Worms’), they seemed to live to expose tight, utterly predictable death metal albums. Expertly performed, super fast and slick – there’s not a whole lot more to them.

How things have changed in the current death metal landscape.

A mass of young and hungry ghouls, especially across Scandanavia, have harked back to the glory days of gory 80′s death metal and produced some vibrant and totally killer death metal lately. There is no lack of young disciples of death cranking out savage releases, be it Morbus Chron, Venenum, Reveal etc. It’s an exciting time again for the style.

All this somewhat strands the elder statesmen in The Wretched End in no-mans land. While ‘Inroads’ is perfectly well put together, it has about as much heart as it’s dull cover art.

The mechanics are, as ever, very solid. The album opener, ‘Tyrant on the Mountain’, provides an opening adrenaline blast of snarl and speed. A nicely spat opening line (”IN THE DEAD OF WINTER…”) and a quality riff that brings to mind shades of Voivod is a nice starting point.

The issue is that this vaguely promising opener is pretty much sunk by the ponderous tracks that comes afterwards. ‘Deathopian Society’ could be a poster track for note perfect death metal that bores just as much as it hits every note spot on.

The release has a slight thrash vibe to it at times, with the unlikely comparison of modern day Slayer albums coming to mind at several points. That said, even the last Slayer album was more diverting than this.

Rentention of attention becomes the main issue as the tracks tick by. There seems to be some effort to insert a sort of northern horror movie atmosphere at points, but this never fully developed and it’s just constant scything guitar, with the ever present rumble of double bass.

Samoth’s guitar playing is beyond question. It’s assured, note perfect and technically very proficient. It sounds like he could have recorded this on autopilot.

The album comes in at a modest 38 minutes, but even this sounds like it’s stretching it too far. That’s a bad sign if ever there was one.

Coming off the back of Emperor’s unassailable reputation, Samoth’s subsequent endeavours seemed worthwhile giving some time to. Nowadays though, there’s so many younger groups who are being far more inventive and effective sounding.

Ultimately, you’ll only ever stick on ‘Inroads’ if you’ve managed to completely ignore everything that’s happened in the metal underground since around 2008 or so.

You won’t be blown away. You won’t be surprised. You might well tap your foot along to some of the faster tracks.

You most likely won’t ever find yourself coming back to it.

2.6 / 5 - Lorcan Archer ::: 17/02/12