Wolvhammer - The Monuments of Ash & Bone

Blackened sludge quintet Wolvhammer don’t create breathtaking sculptures painstakingly ornamented with hand-carved embellishments. Rather, they sink down their piles and erect unforgiving monoliths of poured concrete. The Monuments of Ash & Bone, the band’s fourth full-length release, sees them further refining the bleak volatility formulated on their two prior outings with Profound Lore.

On The Monuments of Ash & Bone, Wolvhammer amplify their smothering sense of despair with effective use of repetition. There are few breaks -- the album nearly bereft of purgative peaks or crescendos -- only endless plains of desolation. The music of Wolvhammer, forged in the mould of harrowing second wave black metal and accented with half-time breakdowns and other aspects of hardcore and sludge, is the march of a deathless army to whom surrender is a foreign concept.