Review Summary: Harsh taken to the next level.
All this talk of climate change and I have yet a reason to give a ***! “Why?” you ask with a sense of hatred towards the insensitive prick who typed this review (think about the starving children in Africa dying of famine). Because for someone who lives in Canada, longer summers and milder winters (remember, not all Canadians suffer horribly biting winters depending on region) only means a more enjoyable lifestyle, at least for most of us who don’t make a living off winter. A little harsh you say? That’s the point I’m trying to make with Wold’s sound and my apathetic opening statement. This also brings me to a cross-road with Wold who dwell in one of the roughest climates in Canada. You see, Wold’s music is a total reflection of the loneliness, emptiness, and abysmal ass-freeze that people on the prairies must endure during these months of hell and you can certainly hear the environmental drive behind their walls of sheer noise. Here’s where it gets tricky. Whether or not you believe in climate change is irrelevant but if it indeed is happening at a rapid pace, I would put money down on Wold’s sound becoming more
Lovey Dovey instead of depressing down an eternal hole to a frozen hell. If
Freemasonry were to be any indication on climate change happening in Saskatchewan, Canada, Wold have yet to show any indication that Al Gore’s projected “all summer paradise” is really happening in this unforgiving world.
Freemasonry is a step away from
Working Together For Our Privacy but takes a step back into
Screech Owl territory where differing song lengths rule the day and ones exercise to bombard the listener with three 11 minute tracks became too much to endure. By breaking song lengths into a multitude of differing times, the listener was able to start off with a few shorter tracks and work their way into Wold’s chaos (this at least worked for me). Hence why
Screech Owl’s formula worked so well and it’s no different on
Freemasonry. Wold break down this album into two song types; one of which focuses on minimal soundscapes – or “harshscapes” as I would like to refer to them as – that sound as dry and desolate as a cold prairie night and the second of which focuses more on a hypnotic atmosphere of sorts where Wold shines brightest (or darkest) taking the listener on a pulsating journey through scathing, fuzzy black metal that really leaves no room to breathe. It almost represents anti-light that allows a few figures to emerge out of the darkness and permits a subtle touch of Mother Nature’s cold finger tips to run up and down your spine. Hell, it even sounds like they opened the door to the studio and recorded a blizzard on some of these tracks. Wold have mastered this approach on cuts such as ‘Working Tools for Praris’ or their best song to date entitled ‘Free Goat of Levitcus’ that simply oozes away at your cerebral insides and puts you into a state of deep-freeze. And those wretched raspy vocals that people can’t seem to get by? They are still high up in the mix and will either make you solder your ears shut or provide another hypnotic element to this evolving sound Wold has been pushing going on the better part of a decade now.
So in conclusion, Wold dish out another blast of blackened noise that has now become the standard bearer in this emerging sub, sub-genre of metal. This isn’t to say that this album gets into a comfortable rut considering the songs presented here span their entire discography. It’s that it was expected and they really do nothing to up the ante on their noise masterpieces such as
Screech Owl or
Working Together For Our Privacy. What they accomplish on
Freemasonry is a cementation of their sound and most likely ( judging by a sound driven by environmental factors) Wold tread the comfortable line whether climate change is happening or not. *** Al Gore!
