Woods of Ypres – Woods 4: The Green Album

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Earache Records
Produced by Musk Ox, Miguel Gauthier & David Gold

It’s downright baffling that few (if any) bands besides Canada’s Woods of Ypres have discovered that doom and black metal are two genres that demand blending. By fusing the melancholy strains of mid-’90s My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost albums with equal parts Dawn of The Black Hearts and disarmingly black humour, the quartet has managed to put out one of the darkest and most darkly funny albums since the demise of Type O Negative.

Woods 4: The Green Album consists of sixteen songs, nearly hitting the single-disc cap of 80 minutes, and while they can’t all be zingers, most of them get very close. The first four songs on the album – especially the brooding eight-minute number I Was Buried In Mount Pleasant Cemetery and the woe-is-me second track Everything I Touch Turns to Gold (Then to Coal) – show most of the band’s vast songwriting repertoire and put most modern doom to shame. In an era where too little doom recalls the most important era for the genre post-Sabbath, Woods of Ypres takes a long hard gaze into their Peaceville Three collections before committing anything to tape, and the reverence shows. While songs like Wet Leather and Halves And Quarters couldn’t quite be outtakes from Draconian Times or The Silent Enigma, they’re certainly nodding in that direction while adding their own disparate influences.

The black metal elements are unfortunately subdued far too often. It sometimes seems that Woods of Ypres are more interested in making sure their oh-so-clever lyrics are discernible than doing the material the best service possible. That being said, very little of the 78-minute record is remotely offensive to the eardrums, and even in the occasionally lengthy lulls in dynamism, it’s an exceedingly listenable album. Sometimes influences that don’t need to creep in – is that a Lamb of God riff and vocal pattern on Halves and Quarters? – but this is a band whose calling card is a fearless willingness to try anything once. On The Green Album, they mostly succeed.

“ an exceedingly listenable album ”

Tracklist: Shards of Love / Everything I Touch Turns To Gold (Then To Coal) / By The Time You Read This (I Will Already Be Dead) / I Was Buried In Mount Pleasant Cemetery / Dirty Window of Opportunity (Can You Get Here In 10 Days) / And I Am Pining (For You) / Wet Leather / Suicide Cargoload (Drag That Weight) / Halves And Quarters / You Are Here With Me / Retrosleep In The Morning Calm / Don’t Open The Wounds/Skywide Arms Spread / Natural Technologies / Mirror Reflection & The Hammer Reinvention / To Long Life In The ‘Limbo Union’ / Move On!

Written by Brad Sanders
More: 2009, Albums, Black Metal, Doom Metal, Woods of Ypres