Woods Of Ypres

An album as perpetually delayed as Deepest Roots and Darkest Blues is nearly condemned to anti-climax. Four years is too long for an independent, non-touring band to maintain excitement and momentum with just a couple of songs and a video to fuel the fire. Yet anyone discovering Woods of Ypres for the first time wouldn’t feel that initial chill of disappointment, and even a fan who lost patience is bound to warm up after working past the first couple of indifferent spins. Deepest Roots and Darkest Blues is both between and beyond the Against the Seasons EP and its full-length follow-up; it’s rawer in tone and texture, more refined in structure and form. While Pursuit of the Sun verged on metallised Pink Floyd, Woods’s latest unearths more of the band’s black and dark metal inspirations — the album sounds strongly biographical, musically as well as lyrically. It’s also insidiously catchy, burrowing into the brain’s sound receptors beneath your conscious attention until you start to believe it was worth the wait after all.