ALBUM REVIEW: Animist – Werian

Germany’s WERIAN are a mysterious act that have slowly but surely made a name for themselves with an assortment of demos and a split, gradually developing an heady and powerful sound over the course of ten years. Their debut full length album, Animist, is the culmination of their many years honing their craft, and manages to strike an excellent balance between grand, psychedelic doom and sharp yet melodic black metal flourishes, which helps to create an interesting and powerful record.

Hex, a dark and bleakly atmospheric piece of music, makes great use, initially, of sparse musicianship to build an eerie feel immediately, before launching into the main part of the track. This is an excellent, slow burning track that utilises sludgy bass tones, steady drum patterns and ethereal, clean guitars to create a haunting, hypnotic ambience that persists throughout the track. There’s also some brilliantly used distortion that adds a slight, but noticeable, psychedelic edge to the music, giving it an airy, sublime quality that cuts through the thicker, more palpable moments. The vocals range from deep, sonorous clean passages to dirty, visceral gutturals that achieve their intended affect whilst still remaining understandable.

As Hex makes its way towards the half way mark, it gradually shifts away from the minimalist dirge and becomes a more mid-paced offering with a more vicious sound, although it still maintains much of the epic and calming sound that marked the albums opening moments. WERIAN do a great job of balancing the dense doom side of their sound and the sharper, and more acerbic black metal that underpins everything. Hex doesn’t truly reach its peak until around the ten minute mark, when the music starts to get far more aggressive and driven, with the feral gutturals in particular dominating the sound and adding plenty of depth and power to the song. It’s a great opening track that takes the listener across the full scope of WERIAN‘s sound, and sets them up nicely for the two tracks that follow.

At just shy of thirteen minutes, Animist‘s opener also proves to be the shortest track on the whole album. Blade Of Heresy is even more of a sprawling monolithic than the track that came before it, being far more sepulchral and ominous in its first minute than many parts of the last track. There’s lots of dark, ambient flourishes here that make this a much more unnerving piece of music, with the guitars not making an appearance until a couple of minutes in. If WERIAN had made use of intense, jarring musicianship at this point, as opposed to the much more measured, clean sound that eventually kicks Blade Of Heresy off, the song itself would have meshed incredibly well with the music that it started on. Nonetheless, the music is more ferocious, eschewing the power clean vocals and pristine guitar sound for vicious gutturals and much more heady guitar work, and a prominent, bubbling bass hook. It eventually gets even darker and more oppressive with its heaviness, without fully shedding it’s grim atmosphere, and making use of chanted vocals which sound amazing in among the primal thrum of the bass and sharp, slick guitars. By the closing moments of Blade Of Heresy, the pace quickens and there’s some well placed riffs thrown into the mix, with the drums livening up significantly too, giving this song one last, fierce motif which seems to be heading towards a far more chaotic sound, which abruptly comes to a grinding halt with the end of the track. This song does a great job of expanding on the sound laid down on Hex, and adding some much needed depth and aggression into the proceedings.

March Through Ruins is a monstrous slab of bleak and atmospheric music that brings Animist to a close on arguably its most impressive offering. A powerful, eerie opening motif, which heaps plenty of tension into proceedings, increases expectations exponentially, and when the main part of the track finally kicks in, it does not disappoint; the drumming is noticeably more energetic and frenzied, and the guitars prove to be far more intricate and aggressive than Hex and Blade Of Heresy that have come before on this record. Although there is still a heady doom metal undertone, with a thunderous bass line adding a lot of depth and intensity to the overall sound, the music has definitely shifted to a much more robust, vicious, black metal orientated sound, which serves to make March Through Ruins sound every bit as ferocious and primitive as the songs opening passage suggests. The sludgy, growling vocals fit in with the music incredibly well, and capture the darkness and rage that the music is expressing, making this already fierce track sound even more feral and primal.

As March Through Ruins reaches its half way mark, it changes gear from a blistering whirlwind of fast and technical riffs to much more minimalist fair, with soaring chords and a marching drum beat leading the listener into the songs second half, which treads back down far more sombre, hypnotic paths that were prevalent earlier on the album, adding a vast and grandiose quality to Animist‘s final minute, whilst still maintaining the harsh, dirty vocals, to great effect. This epic motif brings the album to a close, slowly but surely stripping away most of the music until nothing but a great guitar hook and some ominous, haunting organ music is left, making Animist‘s last few minutes sound utterly brilliant.

Animist is an impressive album that shows WERIAN are able to balance their sound and incorporate a variety of different influences. The doom side of the band’s sound makes use of thick and heady distortion to build a solid, sprawling atmosphere on which to impose tight, visceral black and death metal musicianship. Each track stands out in its own right, but it also works really well as a whole, with each song adding to the overall sound of the record, and leading to a powerful, climactic ending. Animist is a great culmination of their many years of work in the past, and sets a lofty bar for them to overcome with their next album, and it will be intriguing to see what WERIAN do next.

Rating: 8/10

Animist is out now via Eisenwald. 

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