Sons of a Wanted Man are a post-black metal band from Belgium and this is their debut album.
Sons of a Wanted Man mix post-metal, shoegaze, and melancholic atmosphere into their blackened concoction, resulting in a multifaceted album that hits many highs across its 47-minute playing time.
The melodies provided by the lead guitars are effectively used to provide emotive highlights, while the underlying rhythms and riffs provide an appropriate bedrock on which entire musical structures grow naturally. I especially like the band’s faster parts, where they deploy blackened aggression that’s sharp and memorable. I like pretty much everything here though, including the mid-paced grooves that remind of Enslaved in places, (although this isn’t an overwhelming influence).
The atmospheric sweep of the music is near-omnipresent, regardless of what the band are actively playing. This seems to saturate almost every part of the songs except when they’re really tearing things up with serrated harshness, (speaking of which, there’s a thrash influence felt in some of the riffs too, which gives the band extra teeth).
The band’s blackgaze aspect has a fragility that sometimes threatens to break with its delicacy of emotion, and I find that there’s just enough of this incorporated into the band’s sound without going overboard, or distracting from the rest of the musical avenues explored.
The high-pitched blackened screams of the singer fit perfectly with this sort of music, and it’s exactly what I would have wanted for the band’s post-blackened style. Other types of vocals do appear, however, providing variety.
I really enjoyed this. Kenoma is a very strong album, of which Sons of a Wanted Man should feel rightly proud.
Very highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 