White Ward - Love Exchange Failure (2019)^{Release ID: 12953}

Lots of Potential, but so many Missed Opportunities

This is quite the ambitious project for a group only on their second album. For those of you who are unaware (and given this band has zero ratings on the website, a lot of you are unaware), White Ward are a Ukrainian post-black metal band whose debut album, Futility Report made its way on to my radar when it appeared on several year end lists for 2017. I liked some of the ideas, but they were handicapped by some really bad production. And so I saw this album rank pretty high on RYM, so I decided to give White Ward another chance to impress me. 

The production and songwriting issues I had with the previous album still hold up, but I can give credit where it is due as the true black metal sections have improved dramatically since 2017. The guitars actually have some natural growl to them and aren't near the front of the mix, drowning out the bass. The vocals are fine enough, drawing a lot of inspiration from George Clarke of Deafheaven. But if you're expecting the rest of this album to sound like Deafheaven, you would be sadly mistaken.

White Ward are not looking to cheer anyone up with these tunes; the typical major key harmonies of albums like Sunbather are nowhere to be found. And the walls of sound are broken up in sizable chunks with slower, atmospheric sections that borrow more from shoegaze and jazz. Yes, jazz. The saxophone as a primary melodic instrument has been improved from the last album at the very least in its tone. That is to say it actually sounds like a saxophone instead of sounding like my crappy MIDI soundboards saxophone tone! However, this is a black metal album, and the horn does sound like it is being drowned out considerably when it is being used during a heavier section. Bands such as Rivers of Nihil, and Moron Police have incorporated saxophone in metal much more efficiently in recent years.

The songwriting is a little worrisome. I like how the group tries to get a little bit progressive with their songwriting as tracks can modulate through a number of different ideas throughout their runtime, but they never feel like they reach their end goal. I have always been a stickler when it comes to progressive songwriting and bringing these long musical journeys back to where they start, or at the very least, return to a major theme or idea. These tunes feel more like a collection of ideas that were just thrown together to make longer songs without putting in the work to make those transitions work.

It is a little bit better than Futility Report on aggregate so I would recommend it, but I would be very cautious. White Ward's sound won't be for everybody; it's a specific brand of black metal that asks the listener to chill out instead of forming a circle pit. And if that's what you're into, more power to you. I just have heard this sound done much better in recent years. By Deafheaven or otherwise.