The Portuguese band Wells Valley was formed in 2011, with debut full-length Matter As Regent following four years later. Two years after that, Matter As Regent was succeeded by an EP, titled The Orphic. Last November, again after two years, Wells Valley released their second full-length album. This second full-length album is titled Reconcile the Antinomy and was released via Black Lion Records. Wells Valley’s line-up consists of guitarist/vocalist Filipe Correia, bass player Pedro Lopes and drummer Mau.
The music Wells Valley delivers on Reconcile the Antinomy definitely belongs in the heavier category of metal. The slowness and heaviness of sludge and doom is present for sure, but when these Portuguese add some more speed their music is also definitely going into a more black metal direction. In the area of rhythm Reconcile the Antinomy regularly sounds quite proggy and avant-garde.
The rhythm-changes that brings aren’t always for the entire band at the same moment, at some moments this is only for one instrument, which adds to the special, avant-garde sound of Wells Valley. This also makes sure that you will keep your attention with the music and that there are many possibilities of discovering new things each time you’ll listen to Reconcile the Antinomy. Especially the drums are standing out in terms of those rhythm-changes. Drummer Mau regularly implements something new in his drum-rhythm. His drums sound very heavy, such as in (Pleroma), Hypostasis and album closer Forty Days, while they have a more deep and epic sound in the second half of Paragon. His drums also play a main role, in the way of blastbeats, in Reconcile the Antinomy‘s fastest moments, where Wells Valley’s music goes more towards black metal. This can be heard in, for example, some parts of (Pleroma) and Hypostasis.
The towards black metal leaning sound of those moments isn’t only because of Mau’s blastbeats, but more because of the combination of these together with Filipe Correia’s screams and the speed of these moments. The combination of those three aspects gives that sound to these moments. Filipe doesn’t only scream at those times, but he does so on the entire album. His screams sound very penetrating, such as in (Pleroma), Henosis and Paragon. There are some exceptions in which he changes to another vocal style for a short moment, such as the dark clean vocals towards the endings of opener Antient and Henosis, as well as in Paragon. In addition to that he also interchanges between grunting and screaming after the creep ghost like sounds in Hypostasis‘ intro, while we can also some of his deep grunts later on in that song.
Pedro Lopes’ humming bass and Filipe Correia’s heavy, lingering guitars are also very, almost constantly, present on Reconcile the Antinomy, with the guitars creating a huge wall of sound, such as in the very droning Henosis, which also speeds up at some moments.
Can you appreciate some heavy sludge/doom metal with some bits of black metal? Then be sure to not miss Reconcile the Antinomy from the Portuguese metallers of Wells Valley!
Hi!
I’m Tim van Velthuysen and I started DutchMetalManiac back in 2014. I’m 29 years old and I live in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Of course, I like metal, but I can also appreciate other musical styles.
In addition to DutchMetalManiac I also have a personal website on which I’ll post various things that won’t fit on DutchMetalManiac, but might be interesting for you as well. It’s in Dutch though.
