Wake – Devouring Ruin (Review)

Wake are a Canadian grindcore band and this is their fourth album.

I really, really enjoyed 2018’s Misery Rites, so I new that as soon as Devouring Ruin appeared, it was a must-listen. Wake have always been a band with a decent amount of dynamic variety in their grinding sound, but on Devouring Ruin they have really upped the ante. Devouring Ruin is a much more diverse, textured, and multifaceted album than any that Wake have released in the past.

Yes, this new Wake album is a different, evolved beast when compared to their past output. The band’s essential grindcore elements are still here, but now these have been augmented with longer, more dynamic and diverse songwriting and influences. These longer song lengths give Wake the time to develop their music and let it breathe into spaces hitherto unexplored.

The core ugly hyper-brutality that the band do so well is still used very effectively, but now it’s been enhanced by all manner of additional elements. The songs contain forlorn melodies, cutting blackened bite, emotive atmospherics, dissonant darkness, expressive post-metal, and sheer visceral brutality, all of which, (and more besides), are wielded by the band like the most natural weapons in the world. The freshly developed emotive/melodic aspect of the material is probably the most striking feature of Devouring Ruin, but not the only one. Also, the band’s skill is such that all of this fits within their overall extreme metal framework quite comfortably.

Wake have crafted an extreme metal album that’s impressive in not only how much the band’s sound has progressed, but also in just how accomplished it is. Wake have dared to expand on their already well-developed sound, and it has paid off handsomely. Devouring Ruin is a monster of an album; don’t miss out on it.