88.1 WKNC Pick of the Week 2/25
Wrath and Rapture
Jonathan Newman
What happens when you combine power metal with black metal? You get Wrath and Rapture, a Carolina band from Winston-Salem. Though what may seem like an odd combination, actually works quite well. Though the vocals made it sound evil, I still couldn’t help but raise my fist during the bridges because they reminded me so much of power metal, that it brought a smile to my face. Never before have I smiled while listening to black metal. However, the style of music is not the only thing that makes me smile, but the talent that these Carolina boys have with their instruments.
When the CD first opens we have a keyboard intro which reminds me so much of Rhapsody its not even funny, yet it still has you bobbing your head along with it and then just as it slows down to the ubiquitous sound of thunder, a evil voice prepares you for what is to come, but nothing can prepare you for the kick in the teeth that is “The Dirge of Fallen Heroes”. With a powerful guitar and gutteral vocals it prepares you for a black metalness, but then suddenly throws in a power metal keyboard riff which confuses you yet mesmerizes you at the same time. Then the song takes a huge leg left into technical black metal and beats you down. “Disbodiment” mixes about 5 different genres together in one song, but while this may seem disorienting, it actually works quite well and makes one of the most memorable songs in the album due to its sheer chaos. The next three songs are all instrumental that all bleed into one song before beating you in ears with a sonic blast with “A Breathtaking Tragedy”, a straightforward black-core song. Nothing too fancy about it, but it shows that a band can take many different paths and not just have to stick to only one genre. However, besides “Dirge” one of my favorite songs on the whole album is “Cosmic Wasteland” because it sounds like Sonata Arctica and The Faceless wrote and performed the song. I could just picture a knight riding a robot dragon across the cosmos while the song was playing. Very epic.
The only problem with this album is all the instrumentals. There are ten songs on here, and yet half of them are instrumentals and one is a cover song. That doesn’t leave much original material, and this could have made a good EP, as the whole album is only 30 minutes long. It’s still a great release though, and I look forward to see what they put out next.
88.1 WKNC DJ Pick of the Week is published in every Tuesday print edition of the Technician, as well as online at technicianonline.com and wknc.org./blockquote>