PURE WRATH - Bleak Days Ahead review

 

PURE WRATH - Bleak Days Ahead

Debemur Morti Productions

This is the fourth full length by this Indonesian one man Black Metal act PURE WRATH. A few years ago I picked up the third full length, Hymn to the Woeful Hearts, which originally came out in 2022. It was in a store, it had a great cover plus the band name was cool as well as the release being on Debemur Morti Productions. I mean everything said yeah this was gonna be great. Musically it was standard Atmospheric Black Metal not much different from French or Quebec acts. I mean hey just look at the label they're on. But hey I liked it a lot.

So here we are with this newest one. And for the record the one man behind PURE WRATH is Ryo (aka: Januaryo Hardy) who is responsible for all instrumentation. Just for the record he uses plenty of keyboards as well as audio sound-bites. Also Ryo is involved in at least a half dozen other Indonesian Metal acts. So to call him prolific is a given.

While listening to this new release I can easily say compared to his previous full length this one has a darker touch. Ryo's vocals are always harsh with a emphisis on anger and despair. So the way the first two title tracks, Parts one & two, come at you is with fierce tremolo picked icy riffage but also toss in breaks of melodic keyboard moments. The other three tracks fall into the same depressive meloncolly trope.

This is late night Black Metal for depressive types who've given up on everything except being creative in their misery. It's that bare light bulb illuminating very little in a darkness that is put there by personal choices. Still it's another good release by Ryo. Although I'm really a fan of Hymn to the Woeful Hearts. In fact before I checked out this new one I ended up playing Hymn to the Woeful Hearts five times in a row that night. Go Figure?    

https://www.debemur-morti.com/en/

LISTEN HERE:

https://purewrath.bandcamp.com/album/bleak-days-ahead