Review Summary: An excellent release that could have been even more, and the perfect debut for Endlesshade.
There are things in the dark, creatures which haunt us and our soul in our nightmares. Here it is a wolf, a black beast consuming all light and life, pushing the existence towards death and misery.
With these words, Rain Without End Records presents to us Endlesshade's debut full length,
Wolf Will Swallow The Sun. Hailing from Ukraine, the female fronted sextet plays a blend of death and doom metal that aims to create an eerie, atmospheric and heavy sound through the use of keyboards and post rock influences. The listener should not be fooled by the gentle intro of "Post Mortem" and Nataliia Androsova's clean singing: as soon as the woman begins to growl you are in for a crushing and yet soothing journey almost devoid of clean vocals.
Heavy riffing will give way to melodic playing, or it will blend with it while Olga Bedash's melancholic keyboard playing will keep the atmosphere up while reassuringly guiding the listener through it. Solid is the rhythm section that maintains order in the chaos of sound, even though the bass playing tends to get buried by the other guitarists. Notable are also Nataliia's deep growls, strong and rather easy to interpret. That is a big plus, because the lyrics are menacing to the right point.
It is pleasant to hear
Wolf Will Swallow The Sun, in every sense. Production-wise, it is polished but not any less malicious. Songwriting-wise, it feels solid and homogeneous but not to the point of having indistinguishable tracks. There is always a memorable moment, may it be the fierce ending of single "7", the haunting second half of "Noctambulism" or the long, melodic breaks in "Edge". That said some parts do sound samey, damaging the album a bit in the long run. The worst offender being the closing track "Truth Untold", the longest track of the album, sadly devoid of any true innovation compared to what came before, but not for this worse once taken alone thanks to an interesting guitar backbone that keeps progressing almost without stopping. By no means a bad track (quite the contrary, actually), its only fault is coming at last.
The main critics that can be moved to the album are very few, the first being already approached. Clocking in almost a hour with only six tracks,
Wolf Will Swallow The Sun is not a listen for everyone. In such a theoretically fragile structure, it is easy to see how a single error in the sequence will be felt more than its real gravity. This is the case for "7". Being the track number two, its two and a half minutes long intro feels totally disjointed from the rest when played after the opener "Post Mortem" that features a much more useful intro to start the album. That is not a big problem, but it is annoying. Finally, the quiet sections feel occasionally samey.
At its core,
Wolf Will Swallow The Sun is an excellent release and debut, one that leaves space for improvement over a few little flaws that prevent it from being considered to be even better as a whole. Everything is set for the release of a fantastic sophomore effort, which is already in the making. Fingers crossed.
