Waves of Decay are spreading the news of their new, available-now album Burn Your Angel Wings and we’re here to help them. The band hail from Antwerp and their musical style is… well, it’s metal in many of its forms with a hard rock edge. They lay claim to thrash, death, heavy and industrial but there’s more in there!
I’ll confess that opener “The Shape of Your Blood” left me a little overwhelmed with the mixture of styles and there were sections that just didn’t work. Despite having some great individual parts (the overall feel, the pace, the rhythm… spot on), it was the mixture of some near black-metal segments with Stijn “Stekke” Kustermans’ more classic metal/rock vocals that jarred a little too much. He can “harsh it up” a bit when needed and more of this may have helped. It’s not a bad song overall, it just had too much going on for my first exposure to Waves of Decay. Maybe after a few more listens…
But now that little quibble is out of the way, let’s focus on the good stuff. The base sound throughout the album is definitely traditional NWOBHM style rhythms. Each track builds on these foundations, straying into the heavier genres with a little less abandon than that first song. By the time I got to “AngeRED”, I was getting more of a feel for the band and being able to peel apart the layers was able to appreciate the material more. This is a much simpler track, and easier to get into. OK, so it’s less ambitious than our opener but for that reason I found it easier to get into.
If you like what we do, consider ing us on Patreon for as little as £1 per month!
“Catch-22” is a good one, though. Full of heavy slabs, and driven by some great bass work, it’s of the “slow and heavy” school with faster breaks for variety and it just works for me. Plenty of head-nodding pleasure and some staccato flurries in the bridge. Good stuff. They save the best for last with “The Sleeper”, though. A slow-building neck-snapper, reigning in the heavy to just the right degree. Plenty of variety without going overboard, it’s a great closer.
Except there’s one more track. It’s just that it’s not an original song, but a cover. And oh my, it’s a good one. Anyone who’s been reading this site for a while knows that I like it when a band take a song and make it their own, and Waves of Decay have absolutely done that with Maiden’s “The Evil That Men Do”. Tuned to suit their own sound, this has a nice intro that doesn’t come from the original before they rattle into that familiar riff. The mix is different from the classic version, too, with the chunky bass coming even more to the front. Well done, guys!
Don’t fancy Patreon? Buy us a one-off beverage!
Burn Your Angel Wings is an album that took me a couple of listens to get into. Give it a shot with your ears wide open, and dissect it aurally. There’s a lot going on, sometimes a bit too much, but there is also some great material in there.
Check out all the bands we review in 2021 on our Spotify and YouTube playlists!
Waves of Decay: official | facebook | instagram | spotify | bandcamp | youtube
