Band:	Wolvennest
Album:	The Dark Path To The Light
Style:	Krautrock, Atmospheric black metal
Release date:	October 2023

01. Lost Civilizations
02. Adversaries
03. Deathless Love
04. The Timeless All And Nothing
05. The Dark Path To The Light
06. Accabadora

Across their first two records, as well as their side-project The Nest, Wolvennest have tended towards very long, very entrancing albums. With their surprise new album The Dark Path To The Light, the Belgians buck this trend on at least one front, but can their signature ritualistic psychedelia work just as well in more compact form?

Wolvennest are a band that I’ve become very keen on very quickly; their output has been uniformly excellent, as they’ve demonstrated an obvious mastery of combining repetition, layering and dark atmosphere to produce haunting, spiritual experiences. While the likes of Void and Temple haven’t relied on their borderline 80-minute runtimes to find success, the nature of being immersed in them for such periods of time clearly impacts the listening experience. I’ve enjoyed these first albums so much that, when the title track of their upcoming album was released in August with a promised October full album release date, I checked frequently for further updates, yet this release's arrival ultimately turned out to be unannounced, as The Dark Path To The Light appeared on Bandcamp last Friday without fanfare. It quickly turned out that this was not the only surprise in store.

With a total runtime of just over 40 minutes, there’s a clear departure from the first two records in terms of album structure. However, while the format has been altered, the tone of the music is pretty close to what it was beforehand. Probably the major change is that the more strongly processional, occultish tracks such as “Mantra” and “Souffle De Mort” from Temple are absent this time around, as are the more gothic songs like “Succubus” and “Ritual Lovers”. Wolvennest overtly seek to deliver the same aura on this new album with the ominous acoustic guitar-heavy intro piece “Lost Civilizations”, but the ‘full’ songs stay relatively close to one another stylistically, featuring the signature repetition-based krautrock-influenced atmospheric doom of past tracks like “Void” and “Swear To Fire”. Probably the most unusual feature is closing track “Accabadora”, due to the Eastern folkish nature of the main guitar motif and extended dark ambient outro.

While the four central songs feel fairly familiar from what Wolvennest have already established in their career, they still very much feel fresh and exciting. “Adversaries” has a dramatic aura from the backing choral sounds, a narrative central vocal performance from the as-ever impressive Sharon Shazzula, thoroughly enjoyable solos, and extensive layering that brings about exhilarating swells of volume. Immediately afterwards, “Deathless Love” goes a bit gloomier, stripping things down a tad and allowing the extensively repeated central riff to serve as a platform for gradual escalation.

Shazzula is a brilliant frontwoman for the group, but just as on Temple, Wolvennest make good use of guest vocalists; this time, they bring in D.G. from Misþyrming to add some fierce growls to the bleak, sinister “The Timeless All And Nothing”. The clear standout track on The Dark Path To The Light in my opinion, however, is its title track; while certain adjectives find themselves easily associated with Wolvennest songs (eerie, ominous, sinister), I’m not sure they’ve ever given off such a sense of sorrow as they do on this song. Rooted in a very slow doomy tempo, the song features a curious juxtaposition between the understated, tender vocals of Shazzula and the intense emotion that seems to radiate from the simple yet incredibly effective chord choice in the primary riff motif, a passion only exceeded by the achingly sad lead guitar melody and solo. As with all their songs, the track remains pretty static in its approach throughout, but they turn this into a positive due to the strength of the core components.

By this point, anyone acquainted with the group will have a firm understanding of what their songs are likely going to shape up as: an understated introduction eventually leads into what will be the primary riff for the bulk/entirety of the track, Shazzula will trade her vocals with lead guitar lines or solos, and evolution will take the form of additions to the mix rather than changes in rhythm or riffage. There’s a potential that, with enough time, this formula will start to lose a bit of its appeal, and with a reduced range of styles on this latest effort compared with the first two albums, the risk of the familiar becoming overfamiliar is greater. However, there’s just something about their approach that I find to be thoroughly engaging no matter how many iterations of it I hear, and when it results in songs as excellent as “Adversaries” and “The Dark Path To The Light”, I find myself more than satisfied. This new album is, out of their four releases to date (including the Vortex EP), perhaps the least remarkable, but it’s still a darn good record.