This year, we decided to ask musicians that we truly admire to pick their favorite albums of the year and name a band they’d like to get together and make a new record in 2014. Check out below the second batch of answers that we received from members of Woe, Celeste and Winterfylleth.

Chris Grigg (Woe)

What are your top 10 releases of 2013?
Unweighted for preference:
1-Beastmilk - Climax
2-Carcass - Surgical Steel
3-Chelsea Wolfe - Pain is Beauty
4-Fuck Buttons - Slow Focus
5-Gorguts - Colored Sands
6-Inter Arma - Sky Burial
7-Kanye West - Yeezus
8-My Bloody Valentine - MBV
9-Queens of the Stone Age - …Like Clockwork
10-A Wilhelm Scream - Party Crasher

What’s the best concert you have seen this year?
That's hard to say. It's a tossup between Nine Inch Nails, Kanye West, and Inter Arma while we were on tour with them. NIN were absolutely perfect and mind-blowing; Kanye was really exciting; Inter Arma were consistently breathtaking and powerful.

What band would you like to reunite and make a record in 2014?
Failure. We're half-way there, what with them announcing reunion shows in 2014, but they haven't said anything about an album. It doesn't seem out of the question!

Johan (Celeste)

What are your top 10 releases of 2013?
1-Deftones - Koi No Yokan
2-Rorcal - Villagvege
3-Russian Circle - Memorial
4-Ulcerate - Vermis
5-Bring me the Horizon - Sempiternal
6-Katy Perry - Prism
7-Toxic Avenger - Romance and cigarettes
8-Ataraxie - L'être et la nausée
9-Black Tongue - Falsifier
10-Terra Tenebrosa - The Purging

What’s the best concert you have seen this year?
The Sea And Cake at L'épicerie Moderne, Feyzin

What band would you like to reunite and make a record in 2014?
Shora

Chris Naughton (Winterfylleth)

What are your top 10 releases of 2013?
Top 15 as I tried to include everyone's view.
1-Carcass - Surgical Steel
2-Grave Miasma – Odori Sepulcrorum
3-Hate Forest/Ildjarn - Those Once Mighty Fallen
4-Katatonia - Dethroned & Uncrowned
5-Palms - S/T
6-Black Sabbath - 13
7-Windhand - SOMA
8-Saor - Roots
9-Wardruna - Runaljod – Yggdrasil
10-Hail of Bullets - III: The Rommel Chronicles
11-In Solitude - Sister
12-Deafheaven - Sunbather
13-Atlantean Kodex - The White Goddess (A Grammar Of Poetic Myth)
14-Cult of Luna - Vertikal
15-Cathedral - The Last Spire

What’s the best concert you have seen this year?
Iron Maiden - Maiden England at Graspop Metal Meeting, Belgium
I think this was one that was a true highlight for all the Winterfylleth members, a top day having played the festival and then seeing the Maiden bring the house down at the end was a real delight.

What band would you like to reunite and make a record in 2014?
I think I’d personally like to hear what At The Gates could come up with if they did another album.


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Three years on from the release of their acclaimed debut album for UK’s Candlelight Records, US black metallers Woe are back with a renewed line-up and a new album entitled “Withdrawal” that confirms Woe as one of the most enthralling black metal acts of nowadays. We were able to get guitarist and vocalist Chris Grigg to answer a few questions about this new effort. 

In the press release you describe “Withdrawal” as a synthesis of the strongest elements from your previous two efforts and I agree, it does blend the ferocity of A Spell For The Death of Man along with the dynamics of Quietly, Undramatically. Is that what you were going for right from the start?

"Absolutely. Playing live for as long as we did helped us realize what we did well and what we didn't. We tried to draw from that to create something that exploited our strengths."

I also read that this new album is more of a collaborative effort whereas in previous works you been the sole songwriter? What role did the other members had in the shaping of the new songs?

"Somewhat, I wrote all but "Ceaseless Jaws," which was Ruston's, and "Exhausted," which was mostly Ben's and features his riffs most heavily. For "Exhausted," I was mostly involved in the arrangement, modified a few of the riffs a little, augmented them with additional guitar parts or changed the structure. Shawn Riley, our bassist at that time, was also involved in that song. Ben also played some of the outro leads in the last song. Grzesiek was extremely involved in the recording of vocals and even when he wasn't singing, he was there to keep me on my toes and make sure nothing sucked."

So knowing that the writing of Withdrawal was somewhat more diplomatic, how do you describe the whole creative process behind this new album? How do you go about turning everyone’s ideas into a Woe song?

"Well, since this only really applies to "Exhausted," we mostly worked on that before I moved out of Philly and up to New York. Ben and Shawn would come over, we'd connect directly into my recording setup, set a click, program drums, and work with it from there. We'd all be able to jam and we'd usually pass the guitars back and forth when someone had a cool idea. It worked very well! ...and then I moved, which put a damper on things and I ended up working solo, sending demos to everyone. We are going to work differently next time, I hope."

Now that you’re touring a lot more, do you take into account how the songs will sound in a live setting during the writing sessions?

"We tried to take that into consideration while writing and recording and were pretty successful. We just completed our first 11 shows since the album was released and found that most of the songs translate live very well, though "Song of My Undoing" is a bit harder than the others to pull off because I'm not as confident with my singing as I'd like to be. That will change, of course."

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"Withdrawal is about giving up, moving on, starting over. It's about looking at yourself and your world and trying to be more than you are."

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I understand that you’ve handled the production on this album yourself? Why did you decide to go for that approach?

"I have control issues... Haha. It's hard for me to trust something so sensitive to someone else. In the case of both Withdrawal and Quietly, Undramatically, the recording processes took so long that going with someone else would have required a budget increase of 2 or 3 times. We hope to be more prepared for the next album and are talking about working with someone else to engineer. I find the whole process so stressful, it would be nice to just focus on performing and leave all the technical stuff to someone else."

In terms of sounds, was there anything you were attempting to do differently or improve upon with this album compared to previous releases?

"We wanted something similar to the first album, but with a thicker, more natural sound. I wanted guitars very up front, very clear but still aggressive, and we hoped to hit a level of quality that sounded professional without being over-produced. I was very unhappy with how Quietly, Undramatically's drums sounded and where the guitars sat in the mix -- all my fault. I also wanted a strong, very identifiable bass sound and I definitely nailed that."

Is there a concept or theme behind the album? Quietly, Undramatically seemed to deal with some depressive and aggressive themes, so has your approach changed much in the last three years?

"Withdrawal is about giving up, moving on, starting over. It's about looking at yourself and your world and trying to be more than you are."

What's next for the band? Do you have any aspirations to tour overseas, in Europe, for example?

"We will be in Europe this September, from about the 6th until the 21st. September 20 will be our appearance on Incubate, a music festival in Tilburg, Netherlands. The rest of the dates are still being figured out but we expect to play Germany, the UK, possibly Denmark, and a few others. We plan on doing more US tours, definitely something on the West Coast, hopefully something in the South, all before the end of the year."

More info at: www.withdrawal.woeunholy.com
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Three years following the release of their acclaimed debut album for Candlelight Records, Philadelphia’s black metallers Woe are back with a new album and a revamped line-up. Founder, guitarist and vocalist Chris Grigg, and bassist/vocalist Grzesiek Czaplan are now joined by Ruston Grosse on drums and Ben Brand on guitar and this new blood really brings the band to a whole new level. The press release even makes a point in mentioning that ‘Withdrawal’ is the first Woe record that includes the contributions of other members other than Grigg, and that is well illustrated throughout these new songs. But rest assured, even tough this is more of a collective writing effort, Woe have not veered off their initial path and ‘Withdrawal’ is still black metal all the way through spat out with venom and fury. True, there are brief moments when they dive into other directions, weaving tuneful clean vocals along with some grand guitar harmonies, a combination that leans more towards Alcest than Darkthrone. But none of these flourishes hold back the band’s ability to crush and they do exactly that for most of the record, churning out some fierce black metal with powerful intensity. The guitar work is really impressive here and showcases their remarkable ability to manufacture some killer hooks. Take song number two “Carried by Waves to Remorseless Shores of the Truth” as example, whose heavy, catchy riffing intertwines with some lead work that harkens back to the glorious days of Bay Area’s thrash metal.
‘Withdrawal’ is a great release that will surely reinforce Woe’s place as one of the top black metal bands from the other side of the Atlantic.

Band info: www.withdrawal.woeunholy.com
Label info: www.candlelightrecords.co.uk

 

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When I wrote the review of Woe’s second full-length “Quietly, Undramatically” and submitted it to the band and their record label Candlelight, I’ve never thought I’d get more than the typical response expressing their gratitude for the feedback. So imagine my surprise when Woe’s guitarist, vocalist and mastermind Chris Grigg wrote me back to clarify a few things I misinterpreted, namely the linear notes in the album that state Woe stand for satanic black-metal. Yet Grigg rectified that it’s more to do with rebellion and life-affirmation/will to power philosophies than the standard concepts affiliated with black-metal, right?

“Well, it wasn't so much that misinterpreted, it was more that you seemed to find the statement of the album as "Satanic black metal" a little confusing since there's no overt references to Satanism. Satanism is at the core of my philosophy, but my focus is on the practical aspects of it, the real-world application: self-reliance, self-discovery, and the investigation (and hopefully annihilation) of those pieces of our Self that hold us back as individuals. A lot of people seem to think that Satanism means you talk about hating God and Christianity and being "blasphemous" and all that shit. I don't have a problem with any of that but it doesn't fit with what Woe is all about because it just doesn't go anywhere. By taking control of your world, acknowledging that nothing has meaning and you are the only authority, you are well on your way to being a Satanist. I like the idea that someone will listen to Woe, appreciate the lyrics and the message, but never realize that it is the practical application of Satanism until after the "damage" is done.

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Don’t be fooled by the title of the album, it doesn’t reflect the hate-fuelled black-metal sound peddled by this Philadelphia band.
It seems that every exterior sign of “Quietly, Undramatically” is a bit misleading. In the album’s inlay card there’s a statement that says Woe is “satanic black-metal, hatred is our heart”, yet save for some inverted crosses spotted on the front-cover, the band doesn’t exactly portray an image of a band devoted to Old Nick. Woe doesn’t hear cosmetics, spikes or other artefacts, their lyrics are more thoughtful and philosophical than the usual “hate God, hail Satan” thing and it’s only on second theme “The Road From Recovery” that they fully reveal their hateful impetus, offering thunderous blast beats paired with a malignant amount of raucous riffs. So by now, you should interiorize that we are not before the average black-metal act adherent to the dark side.
Anyone familiar with the band’s history will know that Woe started out as one-man bedroom black-metal act centred on guitarist and vocalist Chris Grigg, yet for this second album Woe morphed into a full fleshed band featuring members of Absu, Woods of Ypres, the Green Evening Requiem, and as consequence this new record sounds more expansive than previous work “A Spell for the Death of Man”.
While said work was absolutely relentless and spiteful from start to finish, “Quietly, Undramatically” shows a more multifaceted and mature craft, shifting into a more textured and melodic style on some occasions that masterfully counterbalances their full-blooded mood. There are moments of near-brilliance here, like the title theme which flirts with prog-intricacies and introduces some clean vocals by Grigg for first time in their career, the epic “Full Circle” that lasts for full 13 minutes and displays some rather tasteful and serpentine riffs.
This is prime U.S. black-metal overflowing with a malevolent impetus that should please both the conservative and liberal fans of the genre. (8/10)

Band info: www.quietly.woeunholy.com
Label info: www.candlelightrecords.co.uk
For fans of: Black Anvil, Cobalt, Krallice

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