| CD REVIEW Weh |
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Band: Weh Weh are a Folk project by Erik E, who wanted to create an acoustic mixture of darkened feelings and natural emotions. With the moniker Weh, Erik recorded and released a first demo / EP in 2002, called The Death, and it received very positive reactions in Norway as well as in the rest of the world. 2003 saw the release of a second demo, a seven-tracker, called All The Sinners Are Sleeping Now, followed in 2004 by demo #3, The Coffee’s Cold In The Morning, The Beer’s Warm At Night (ten tracks). In between, Erik was asked by Windir’s Hváll (now in Vreid), to cover a Windir-song. Windir-frontman Valfar tragically died earlier that year, and the aim was to release some kind of tribute-album, which would be the last one through Windir as a band. Erik E, as Weh, contributed with Likbør, taken from the Windir-album Sóknardalr. Two more demos were recorded, Hoof & Horn (2005) and North (2006), but then things went silent. Until 2009. Erik E and Soulseller got in touch and this resulted in the idea to release all this demo material on CD. Erik started recording five new songs (these ones in fact are titled :origins:, which gave the name to this compilation) in July 2010 to include them on the compilation; and finally a rather new song, "The Seaward Song", which was recorded in 2009 to appear on a Brazilian online compilation, was chosen to appear on this double-compilation as well. Indeed, :origins: compiles all official Weh-material ever recorded. The first disc (fifty nine minutes, twenty two songs) opens with the debut EP/ demo, which brings a form of Neo-Folk with twelve-string guitar, vocals and tambourine only. The vocals are ‘clean’, yet with a few brutal additions as well. These (short) songs are melodic, melancholic and atmospheric, and at the same time both warm and cold. The same goes for All The Sinners …, but this demo had more variation. It contains bass guitars as well, and the song structures are less ‘simple’. Next come the tracks off The Coffee’s Cold …, Weh’s most dynamic demo recording in comparison to both former ones. Disc two (fifty nine minutes, fourteen titles) opens with that Windir cover, once released on Valfar, Ein Windir (Tabu Recordings), and this song might be the most impressing one to date. It’s less sober, but once again, it is a Windir adaptation! The tracks from Hoof & Horn are less ‘flat’ than before, with (a little more) dynamism, and this demo was a huge step forward, I guess. In the same vein goes North, the 2006-demo, as well as the previously unreleased 2009 song "The Seaward Song", one of the most varied ones ever done by Weh. The second disc ends with the five new songs, recorded in 2010, which go on in the same vein when it comes to relative variation and dynamism, yet again the repetitive soberness of the earliest demos might be confusing – and at the same time it sounds darker than ever before. :origins: is not an easy-listening compilation, because two hours of rather un-varied acoustic Neo-Folk is hard to get through, hard to digest. It is worth trying, it is nice to listen to it in pieces. Maybe, maybe not…For fans of: Loitsu, Orplid, Sol Invictus, Forseti, :Of The Wand And The Moon:, Oathless etc. Yes, even While Angels Watch, Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio, Blood Axis and Current 93 come to mind from time to time! --/100 Ivan Tibos. |
