WOODEN STAKE

by MMB

Wooden Stake (U.S.): A Feast of Virgin Souls (Razorback Recordings)

I like the various musical endeavors by Vanessa Nocera. She's dedicated to metal and is involved in several things all the time. I'm always curious to hear what she's plotting next. I guess people associate her with brutal death metal, but Wooden Stake is something different: doom. The guitar sounds like classic doom. I hear Candlemass, Sabbath and the guitarist William Wardlaw wears his Saint Vitus shirt everywhere he goes, whether it’s the grocery store or the local funeral house, where he hangs out every afternoon for fun. As the years go by, Vanessa is getting more and more fearless: singing, black metal witch vocals, death metal barbaric grunts, it’s all in here. Wooden Stake is a lot more traditional than the doom/sludge/stoner bands that in 2015 are categorized as doom. First, this music is not all slow; there are headbanging moments; there are slow, heavy moments, too, of course, but this is not a monotonous album at all. The faster moments sound a lot like old school heavy metal. This variety makes the album an interesting listen, and leaves you thinking that you need to hear it again to figure it out better. The combination of traditional metal and extreme metal in Wooden Stake is a nice change of pace from the current doom trends. No “post-metal” here.

www.razorbackrecords.com

www.facebook.com/woodenstake

WOODEN STAKE - Hanging from the Inverted Cross