Album Review: WREN – SELF-TITLED EP

Wren, a quintet from the musically gifted city of London put out an EP in February consisting of four impossibly perfect ambient metal tracks. But the real crime here is that I’m just getting around to telling you this. Hopefully, you’re already hip to Wren. And since your mind has already been elevated by the 20 minutes of sludgy down tempo that makes up the self-titled EP, like me, you can’t wait to hear what’s next from this stellar London-based group. But if you haven’t heard of Wren, well today is your lucky day, Jack.

Wren has only been together a short time – less than a year; and only started playing live gigs back in May. But the bands collective members have a long history in the London music scene. Alex Wealands, Wren’s current vocalist, is also the former vocalist for long-running London hardcore band, Throats (who after three year hiatus just announced via their Twitter that they will be doing some “riff destruction” which if my heavy metal translation skills are still up to par means “be on the look-out for new material from Throat”), the buzzy quad, Exhaustion,  as well as established London experimental instrumentalists, obe .

After recording their first EP back in 2012, the band went through a few lineup changes. With the addition of Alex Wealands on vocals, Wren’s self-release makes for one hell of record – full of paranormal scream-o and long pounding riff landscapes that sound like the signal that the the end of times is coming. Wren digs deep in the dirge for every track on the EP, especially when it comes to the track Pathos. Pathos is a bit of a throwback to me, specifically a nod to the year 1971 and Black Sabbath’s masterpiece, Masters of Reality. Sure, that’s a heavy statement, but Wren is a fucking heavy and beautifully desolate sounding band. It’s aggressive prog at it’s very best, and I highly recommend getting lost in the woods with this EP blaring in your ears.

The EP is only available digitally now, but it looks like it will soon see a physical release via vinyl later this year thanks to doom purveyors Aonair. Wren may be flying low under the radar for now, but that’s all going to change very soon as the band has been getting high heavy metal marks from sites like Metal Sucks, Echos and Dust, and punk/metal DIY mag, Idioteq.