Dan Hillier
One only needs to look beneath the labyrinthine streets and canals to see what talent this area is producing and harbouring. However, one act that completely substitutes conformity for authentic ingenuity and musical integrity is VOW. A somewhat secretive proposition who’s namesake will be met with knowing smiles and nods from the most dedicated pursuers of contemporary extremity, VOW are often lauded as being one of the most challenging, uncompromising and forward thinking bands in the Northern area. A mighty reputation indeed, but it’s something they effortlessly uphold with their latest effort Icarian.
Composed of a 13 minute monolith of a title track and a reimagining courtesy of Pijn drummer All Partial (Nick Watmough), this record dynamically showcases VOW’s mindset in visceral and cerebral clarity. Much akin to their 2018 effort Slow Decline, a 35 minute record delivered in two tracks, ‘Icarian’ as a whole is a product of organic variety both in terms of style and emotion. It’s chaptered, multidirectional, multifaceted and simply brilliant.
Opening with morose ambient atmospherics that set the stage for a creeping, ominous riff all before a ravaging midsection of black-metal torment and blastbeats, this is a track of tight fluidity, one focused on it’s direction. One could easily allocate tags such as black metal, post-rock, sludge and noise but yet it’s all of that and more. You wouldn’t be too off the mark by saying it’s the string that joins the dots between acts such as Thou, If These Trees Could Talk, Primitive Man and Amenra – especially in regards to it’s relative focus on progressive nonconformity – but still, it would be pointless to try and pigeon-hole this band or record. VOW are band that exist to pursue the heights of what extreme music can be; they know what to say, how to do it and how to execute it in a way that’s genuinely thrilling.
But yet as the track flows into an introspective post-rock segment prior to a finale that conjures thoughts of Neurosis at their most thought-provoking, one of most evident elements of this is the band’s approach to extreme dynamism. From this one track, it’s clear that VOW are in possession of a steadfast and ravenous need for a sense of catharsis that often serves as the crux of extreme and blackened music. However, unlike a lot of artists that inhabit the space within the blackened echelon, they know how to do it in a way that’s progressive and cohesively organic – even with such track lengths. The more compressed nature of All Partial’s remix of ‘Icarian’ vividly showcases this in a fresh manner. The hallowed bellows and screams of the track have been rewoven as textures and the more percussive and electronic nature of the track brilliantly showcase the left-field experimentalism and human hubris that underpin it’s source material.
It’s natural to cry out for a full length from VOW following this, but it’s pretty much crystal the band don’t play by the whole album release cycle rule. Nor do they operate with the industry at large as a whole. Instead, this is a release from a band that create art only when it’s rightfully required. ‘Icarian’ is a fantastic, cathartic and relentless exercise in extreme progression and dynamism, one that would be undoubtedly be adored by fans of acts such as Hidden Mothers, Oathbreaker and the aforementioned Amenra, but still entirely unique in it’s broad scope.