wode

Wode - "Plagues of Insomnia" (Premiere)

Perhaps many of you, like me, suffer from chronic insomnia. Since birth, I’ve just never been good at getting to sleep. Dark, light, home, elsewhere, doesn’t matter. Going days in a row without sleep against my will is something I’ve had to learn to live with. Still, it’s never easy staring at the ceiling, feeling minutes tick away, knowing that you’ve got to try and sleep to make the next day less of a clouded gauntlet while feeling powerless to stop it.

I think of insomnia as better subject matter for funeral doom, but UK trio Wode wrote “Plagues of Insomnia,” the second-to-last track from their upcoming self-titled debut, as a ripping 9-minute black metal roller coaster. These days black metal could mean almost anything, so it’s more precise to say that Wode play Blue Cover Black Metal (even though their cover is more green).

Melodic, thrash-inflected and more interested in riffs than atmosphere, Blue Cover Black Metal stems from the golden periods of Immortal, Emperor and especially Dissection. The style continues today. Watain play BCBM, so do Mgla, and from this side of the Atlantic so do Black Anvil, with whom Wode have shared the stage. You can practically hear the cerulean dye seep from every second of this song, but when the weeping lead melody kicks in at 6:50 and especially when it returns at 7:55, it practically erupts in a torrent.

Wode will drop on April 8 via Broken Limbs in the US, Sell Your Soul Records in Europe and COF records on cassette. Follow Wode on Facebook.