Vvilderness is the brain child of one Hungarian man, Vvildr, and Devour the Sun is his Vvilderness debut (he has some other purely instrumental bandcamp releases under  the moniker ‘Release the Longships’). Originally independently released on bandcamp last year, Russia’s Casus Belli and Australia’s Beverina Records has picked up the rights and is releasing a limited run of LPs with Poland’s Wolfspell Records to release a CD version shortly. And this release certainly deserves more versions, releases and exposure.

What we have here here is some absolutely gorgeous,  melodic atmospheric black/blackgaze metal carved straight from the same cloth as Ghost Bath, Alcest, Saor, Woods of Desolation and Vallendusk.  Make no bones, this is not ‘grim’ or ‘tru’ or ‘Kult’ but an uplifting, shimmery effort full of stunningly harmonic tremolo riffs and 6/8 gallops.

The programmed nature of the drums is apparent, but not distracting as the riffs steal the show as VVildr certainly has a grasp of rousing nature loving melodies. It starts with an instrumental “Starless Dark”, which astute listeners might construe as Vvildr’s take on John Murphy’s “Adagio in D Minor” from the movie ‘Sunshine’ (and based on Vvildrs prior bandcamp releases he does indeed have a fondness for reworking folk and traditional songs’ music) . Pretty good start if you ask me. “Sól” gets things going for real with some stunning melodies and if the ‘look up at the wondrous sun/sky’ riff at 3:41 doesn’t get to you, you might be dead inside. The title track again imbues a little John Murphy as Vvilder has clearly heard the 28 Days Later sound theme, but adds his own soaring shreddage, acoustics and array of distant deeper and higher rasps.

Short but wondrous instrumental “Life” breaks up the album before “New Earth” delivers a more mid paced sway with a bright, airy feel, likes the songs namesake with some added highland pipes akin to Saor, and the riff about 5 and half minutes in is to die for. 10 minute album closer “Aftershine” is has an  utterly gorgeous 6/8 blast beat to start, adds some lovely cellos, and a despondently harmonic mid song swing that’s amazing. I just wish the track didn’t waste its final 3 minutes with a glorified fade out.

This is one of the more promising metal newcomers I’ve heard  recently, heard and the the only down side to this release is that it ends after 38 minutes. Go grab the bandcamp release for now and grab the LP and CD when they come put.

[Visit the band's website]

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