Wicked King Wicker - Evolving

Hailing from New York, USA comes the doom, noise, drone and metal supreme duo known as Wicked King Wicker. To start off with a description of the band would be quite boring and redundant; they like to focus on the occult, and speak of Satan like most other extremely dark acts out there. That's not to put their image down, for they pull it off well, it's just that after seeing something played off in a similar manner day after day it gets fairly watered down.

Now, their latest release is called Evolving, and it includes four different tracks. The shortest one rings in at seven minutes and thirty two seconds, while the longest stretches for about fifteen minutes and thirty nine seconds. And they are pretty harsh and heavy tracks, each packing sounds that imitate that of some muddy recording and chaos, both of which are extremely acceptable within this category of music.

We kick off the album with the demonically titled The Devil Must Learn The Limitations Of The Host. We're served up about ten minutes of metal inspired noise, reverberating a lot with echoes making the song sound spacious. The voice that comes in around the one minute and thirty second mark is evil enough on its own to make one shit themselves should they find that demonic tongue flickering at them during pinnacle evening hours.

The one thing that I've always hated about heavy noise bands such as this are really high pitched sounds. They never really quite come out right, and the same is said for the intro track. Around the six and a half minute mark comes in this really annoying squealing sound that just ruined the mood of the track for myself. I hated it. It lasts for about a minute and a half, but once it goes away, the rest of the song was nice and tidy.

The second starts off with some annoying squeals again, sounding like a rusty door opening and closing over and over. The rest of the noise on top of it doesn't do much to cover it up, but, thankfully, the sound goes away around the two and a half minute mark, and that's where I start enjoying the sloppy noise that hit my ears. The same rhythm is sort of apparent throughout the song, and as it is, more high pitched noise presents itself in the duration of the song. It was, once more, annoying to get through, but the moments where the squealing wasn't presenting itself were very nice.

Zen And The Art Of Nihilism came in as the third track and once more had the same problem as the rest of the songs with high pitched sounds that just bothered me to no end. I couldn't really take it all too well. But, the thing is that I really do enjoy it when just lower sounds come into play, because these guys do make good noise.

And, that's why The High Exalted Nothing came to be my favorite track on the album. Some barbaric, cave man like grunting accompanied by distorted hissing amongst the beautiful dark noise that came out so horrifically good throughout the track was inspirational. I only wish i heard more of this in the previous three tracks.

But then the album ended and I was left a fair bit disappointed. Though I struggled to get through most of the album saying good things, I can at least proclaim that the final track sent me off with a bit of a surprise and a smile on my face. After enduring a withering battle that almost had me throw my earphones off, I came to a pretty decent track that fucked my brain in a good way. I hope that their next release throws me something more like The High Exalted Nothing and less like the other three songs that split my brain like an ax to a log. Apr 08 2014