Wooden Veins - Impending Waves (2023)

Highly melancholic and expertly crafted, “In Finitude” was the bands excellent 2021 debut and with “Impending Waves” they show this was no fluke. Composed of musicians from Chile, but residing elsewhere, the band’s music has a certain Mar de Grises edge but with their own shroud of melancholy and despair. If you are looking for a truly engaging and melodic dose of bleakness, this release is right up your alley.

Opening quickly with the lush “Dreamside Death”, the band quickly sets a very mellow and yet expertly crafted mood with lush layered guitars and highly emotional vocals. The mixture of proggy and doomy riffs and tempo changes makes for very unique and engaging pieces like “Tearing Seas”, “The Dreamer” and the more dynamic “Skies”. The way the band layers their guitars alongside dreamy atmospherics is excellent, creating a very intoxicating style and sound.

With plenty of stand-out tracks to pick, we personally enjoy the duality between the atmospheric parts of songs like “Ganymede” and the more direct tracks like “Kaimerah” and “Calling”. With some Black Metal-ish riffs, many of these songs have a wide variety of layers that are slowly peeled the more you listen to them. Our favorite track has to be the Anathema-meets-EF “Broken World” and the melancholy that it oozes from the first minute.

Overall, “Impending Waves” is a great release filled with elegant atmospherics and a very diverse assortment of guitar work. The clean and somber vocals elegantly transmit raw emotion, perfectly combining with the rest to create a very soothing and melancholic mood. If you like Doom Metal that strays from the norm and oozes melancholy, Wooden Veins is a band to keep your ears out for.

Label: Ardua Music

Release: June 23rd, 2023

Genre: Melodic/Progressive Doom Metal

Country: Chile