W.E.B. - Jesus Heist

\r\nW.E.B. is a Greek metal band associated with the extreme and dark side of metal. They were formed in 2002 in Athens and "Jesus Heist" is their second release after their debut album "Don’t Wake Futility" in 2005. Their music can be described as a Black/Gothic mixture with an atmospheric vibe, although don’t be mistaken their stuff is way too aggressive to be called atmospheric, and some industrial hints from time to time. Imagine the soundtrack-like inclination to Dimmu Borgir’s black metal in their latest releases, Rotting Christ’s catchiness and wrap all that up with Type O Negative’s brand of gothic metal or even the grotesque darkness from Moonspell BUT without copying or directly referring to any of the bands mentioned above and you may have a small clue about what is going on in this album.
\r\nFirst I want to start with the things I didn’t like in this album. Well, I hate gothic metal!!! And further more the union between gothic and black metal it is a pure blasphemy for me!!So I must assure you that I really tried to listen to this album with an open mind and a truly objective spirit. And that’s when the positive feelings about it started to highly grow. First of all these guys play tremendously well. The whole effort and all the performances give you the strong impression of a well balanced and most of all of an amazingly professional work. Excellent guitars with continuous changes and sweeping black metal riffs varying from fast and brutal to melodic and progressive and even thrashy at times and that don’t leave you unmoved by any means and a fantastic drumming that many times leads to a destructive onslaught!!The keyboards from the other hand are not thankfully overused and they can really create beautiful and interesting melodies frequently with some classical influenced elaboration. But that’s not all. What stoned me even more were even the slight progressive elements that are featured here and there and even a small jazzy feeling (in the track "Theme:As:Resurrection:Hades" for example). I don’t recall any other Greek metal band playing the way these guys do. The compositions are full with clever ideas, creating the one musical theme after the other and never really resting to a specific one but constantly producing and giving birth to all kinds of hybrid aggregations. And most importantly each song keeps its own identity without being at least repetitive which it is a really good thing. The vocals are between harsh black metal shrieks and a low goth clean voice and if I miscount the latter they do a pretty good job here as well while there are also some female vocals in a few tracks. The production is really superb and marks out the band’s performance perfectly.
\r\nComing to an end I must say that my favorite songs from this album is the track "Enthorned" with its aggressive attitude, despite the goth-esque passages, and its great groovy rhythm. Also the track "Destructive Intelligence" which starts with a slight industrial feeling and the common gothic atmosphere but it has one of the most interesting riffs from the album and a really catchy aggressive chorus. And lastly the most favorite track for me is the last one, entitled "Cellembraceaeon", starting with a totally fucking brutality that gradually melts into splendid melodic guitar lines to a smoothly and unbroken continuity before it gets brutal again with the drummer really punishing mercilessly his poor drum kit and ending up to this PERFECT, astonishing melody that gives you the goose amps accompanied with beautiful female vocals and fantastic black metal shrieking.
\r\nFinally I want to clarify that the high rating has nothing to do with my taste in music as it would be completely unfair for the group but it comes with the general belief that these guys are extremely talented from any point of view as well as highly professional to what they managed to achieve in this release. So if you are a fan of this kind of music don’t miss these fine Greeks, their work has nothing to be jealous about from any other similar releases. \r\n

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\r\nVaso Prassa \r\n

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