The Wretched End - Inroads

Samoth is back with his newest project The Wretched End’s sophomore album, and it strikes up in pretty much exactly the same way as the first one: A charging, mechanical, modern black/thrash/death blast. Expect clean, crisp, blade-like riffs, firmly rooted in thrash and death metal while black and industrial hover around the pulsating, double-kick-driven core. Inroads is a marked improvement from 2010’s Ominous, sporting a darker, more mature grip on this unholy trinity of metallic styles. From beginning to end, Inroads crushes and stomps robotically – juggernautically (!) - over the listener. Cosmo’s vocals are competent and evil, mixed with perfect clarity into the band’s refined, organized sound. Across the board, it sounds a bit like a blacker, more apocalyptic version of The Haunted; the edge of TWE’s knife is sharper and colder. This coldness allows only one completely linear emotion to escape: Anger. Expect no diversity here, and don’t expect that the band will be disappointed when you find none. While definitely not the focus, diversity is not Inroads’problem either. Certainly, originality is lacking as well, but that’s not what I disliked about the album either, but rather the consistency. While most of the time tightly coiled riffwhips unleash themselves with more-than-ample ferocity and know-how to suffice, the album is intermittently let down by uninspiring segments that break up the thrashflow, not being quite either dark or pounding enough to keep the atmosphere intact (as on “Cold Iron Soul”, a would-be monstrous song).  Although unoriginality is not Inroads’ downfall, it is perhaps this hit-and-miss nature combined with unoriginality that really stops the album from jumping out at me in any notable way. Also I feel that the punishing sound from beginning to end could be improved with an increase in black, atmospheric segments (maybe a little bit more diversity would help). Only on the odd track such as “Deathtopian Society” do TWE succeed in staying up from beginning to end. Bottomline, I think TWE need more thought and revision applied to song structure in order to achieve a piece of work that is no less relentless (this would detract from the nature of the band) but has a more potent atmosphere. I would still recommend this album to anyone who likes dark, modern thrash, as it is a skillfully conceived and undeniably vicious work.

In summary: Thrashing death metal with evil black metal sensibilities, Inroads manages to create an album that is very enjoyable and yet somehow not quite fulfilling.

Standout tracks: “Deathtopian Society”, “Hunger”

Score: 7.0