WrongI’ve spent the last couple of years discovering that Spain is a country where metal genres are enhanced and re-defined. After Toundra and Hybrid, here’s Wrong. This time it’s black metal which gets the treatment.

There’s plenty of experience behind the two musicians who form Wrong. This no doubt contributes to the eclectic and at times eccentric mix. Variants of death metal and grind dominate the band member’s cv. Drummer and vocalist Phlegeton plays with Wormed, who I know from the classic and highly recommended 2004 split with Goratory and Vomit Remnants “Get Drunk or Die Trying”. The show starts with “They Look at Me”, a vibrant and ghastly ghouls-in-the woods piece of modern black metal, infused with melody and sweeping darkness. My image of a creepy woodland scene is not matched by the odd lyrics: “By this railway travels no train any more” and the less prosaic and more paranoid “In this city you cannot talk to anyone, is better to be cautious instead of to be raped or robbed”. After such public-spirited advice – there’s no mention of buses replacing the missing trains – Through this Slit” is then an interesting development, as a black metal ambiance embraces a riff which bears a strong similarity to Katatonia’s “Brave Murder Day”. Eating corpses and nauseous smells are then the theme of “I Prefer So”, which rises to the occasion musically with its painfully bleak and drawn out instrumental work. Choral chants go with black metal, and recalling Mayhem’s ”Fall of Seraphs”, “Now I Remember” mixes a drum-driven forceful and melodic piece of underlying nastiness with that sharp Katatonian riff. Complete enveloping nastiness is the atmosphere of the final of these five chunks, “I Want to Hear You Scream”. Like all that’s gone before, the production is used to good effect as the growling horror develops as an integral extreme metal song, changing subtly and culminating in a devastatingly majestic and melancholic passage, representing admirably the “toxic smoke” of the lyrics.

The final track reflects those “Memories of Sorrow” more than the others. This is a fine black metal album but one which is engaging and which doesn’t stand still in its musical quest.

(7.5/10 Andrew Doherty)

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