Weesp Hit The Listener With A Wave Of Ambitious Modern Metal On Newest Full Length

One of the first features that sticks out about Weesp’s Black Sails full length — available now — is just how unique the record feels. The tracks weave through an ambitious form of metal that avoids being blatantly in your face or obnoxious in favor of a smoother, more melodic presentation that picks up the listener and carries them along.

That’s hardly to say that it’s simple, though. The music, on a practical level, truly feels like a metallic soundscape, and those aren’t necessarily all that common. Often, bands — at least those that tend towards the more mainstream sides of metal — stick to zeroing in on a particular melodic concept or a particular stylistic flourish and building from there. The Belarussian Weesp, though, present waves of somewhat noisy, somewhat melodic metal and rock that unite into a fascinating overall picture.

That picture doesn’t necessarily spiral “out of control,” and instead, there remains a sense of focus and occasional urgency — and even majesty, to stick with the wave metaphor — inherent in the work. The record, one might say, spins inward instead of outward, presenting somewhat like a modern metal version of the perhaps familiar “mandala” pattern. The refreshingly complex Black Sails feels like it’s got layers and layers to unpack, and Weesp have put each piece perfectly in place for the listener’s examination.

That’s another point where Weesp again distinguish themselves. While at the same time setting themselves apart from
“simplified” rock and metal via their particular presentation, they stay away from getting too inaccessible and instead stick to the smooth, clean vocal featuring road that lets even the most unaccustomed listener latch onto something as the record rockets along.

Still, they never lose their focus, even as they veer into various uniquely paired sonic territories, and they remain hard hitting. Their heaviness, though, proves more of a subtle force, almost pushing the listener to think about the music and its place in their environment and take in an altogether different form of intensity — one which in the world at large and in its more compact form as Black Sails, proves fairly difficult to escape and ignore.

5/5 Stars

Check the record out below via Spotify