WAN -

WAN - WOLVES OF THE NORTH - ABYSS  
Wan is a Swedish black/death metal band with a gory image akin to the early days of Dismember, a primitive cover artwork akin to the olden demos and a whole lot of evil attitude to complement the simple and gloomy music. A song on the disc is subtitled “dedicated to the eternal memory of Quorthon” which is very fitting since the whole six or seven times the disc was spinning in my system the name that kept coming up again and again was Bathory. Seeing the dedication confirmed the belief.
Wan mixes primitive and elementary distorted rhythms with a loud bass sound and macabre vocals and alternate them with a doomy Bathory setting. Several songs slow down to bang Bathory batteries, while others go more for the throat. Unfortunately, not much of it is overly exciting. The riffs are a tad too simple, the vocals evil, but forgettable, the solos scarce and very simple as on Hädanfärd, and it all falls flat after a while. Of note, towards the end, the song Rise Of The Antichrist brings a reproduction of Diamond Head’s Am I Evil beat to the mixture. – Anna Tergel