EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE: WOE – “A TREATISE ON CONTROL”

Of the many black metal bands that have come to gain wider acceptance in the United States over the past few years, Woe are one of my favorites. I find their brand of crunchy, angst-filled blackness to be the most approachable of the lot and the least bogged down by pretentiousness and genre cliches like awful production and silly imagery. I’m hesitant to call Woe more straight-forward — because their music has a palpable level of complexity to it — but it’s just that at the end of the day Woe understand how important it is to just rock and don’t seem too concerned about over-thinking this oft-forgotten fact.

Woe’s 2008 release A Spell For the Death of Man is an album I’ve come back to many a time since its release, so I’m happy that soon enough — on October 12th, to be exact — we’ll get to hear its follow-up, Quietly, Undramatically. In a way, the album name perfectly encapsulates how I feel the band approaches their music; they just do it, without making a big deal of what it is or is not. Their live show is the same way; they’ve completely and intensely rocked my face off every time I’ve seen them.

Until Quietly, Undramatically drops on October 12 via Candlelight we’ll have to settle for this one track from the album, “A Treatise on Control.” But what a doozy it is… “settle” is hardly the word. Stream it below, and check out more Woe on their MySpace page.

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