WILDERUN Epigone | Weekly Heavy Metal Album Review

Released by Century Media Records on January 7th, 2022

Quick Background

Formed in 2012, the New England quartet Wilderun has released three albums prior to 2021, the third one being 2019's "Veil Of Imagination". That album was praised by critics. It transformed and expanded the band's sound resulting in an album that is beautiful and fierce. While their roots are the American response to the European Folk Metal, the band has evolved to a full prog rock/metal band with folk and extreme metal influences.  

Epigone

Epigone arrives as the year starts and it's the band's fourth album. Important to notice that the album was recorded as a 5-piece band with Joe Gettler on the lead guitars. However in the mean time he left the band so Wayne Ingram is now once again in the lead guitar seat and is slaying the parts live. He is also responsible for the orchestrations. The band is completed by Evan Anderson Berry (Vocals, Guitars),  Daniel Müller (Bass, Synths) and Jon Teachey (Drums).  The new album features nine songs in just above one hour. But notice that "Distraction" is broken into 4 songs. And "Ambition" is a short instrumental. The album opens with the relatively short almost 5 minute "Exhaler". It's a folk orchestrated acoustic ballad that to me more than standalone song feels like a long intro to the album. After that we go into a series of epic songs where Wilderun traverse a variety of musical genres, such as epic orchestral passages followed by hard guitar riffs, clean vocals transform into deathly growls. To me there's a lot of Opeth in their sound, but interestingly also bit of Kamelot due to Berry's clean vocals, orchestrations and female backing vocals. There's still a lot of folk and acoustic elements still in their sound but they are much more subtle than in other bands. The middle part of "Woolgatherer" for example is really cool and brings that  Middle Ages feel without the use of in your face folk tricks. 

"Passenger" is my favorite song on the album. That epic opening is great, it sounds huge with orchestrations, a choir and guitar solos. When the clean vocals come in, it brings that power prog metal feel as it could've been in Kamelot's The Black Halo. But then that's mixed with death growls in the best Opeth style it's just great. Talking about Opeth, "Identifier" is one of the best Opeth songs of the last few years. But wait until, it fully brings a Haken vibe to it. The vocal melodies in this song and overall on the album are super catchy and memorable. And both the death growls a la Mikael Åkerfeldt or the clean Roy Khan singing are beautiful. 

"Ambition" is an expendable almost three minute sample effects song that breaks the album into two. The second part of the album is "Distraction" in four parts and totaling almost 20 minutes. It's a journey though what Wilderun is all about. Acoustic passages, clean sing-along vocals building up to huge orchestrations and choirs to death growls during part I. Part II balances melody with aggression and heavy guitars. It also build up to this big erratic orchestration, almost like The Beatles' "A Day in a Life". Part III is like bring us from that sound mountain to a calm valley. A strings and keyboards surround the singing and creates this peaceful ambience. Until this finally leads us to the coolest guitar solo on the album. We then reached "Distraction Nulla" is a 3-minut chaotic instrumental that closes the album without adding much to it. 

The Picky Guy

"Woolgatherer" had everything to be a fantastic song, but a couple of choices made during production ruined the songs for me. Mainly, the piercing noise that is for an inexplicable reason included in a couple of moments during "Woolgatherer" not only irritates me but it physically hurts. I really don't get why they did this, probably nobody on the band suffers from tinnitus, otherwise they would have removed this effect. It ruins the song for me, sorry. Then there's an useless 1 min of sound effects to close the song. With that said, for the rest there are some very cool moments on this song, it's a pity. I also find the opening song too long. And those really the only issues I have with the album. 

Wrap Up Opinion 

Wilderun alternates between orchestrations, folk elements and extreme metal, all executed with technical mastery and skillful songwriting. It's a delight for modern prog metal fans as it draws from many of our favorite bands but the band creates an interesting combination that leads Wilderun to have an unique and hard to define style. Despite some editing issues and a couple of poor choices, I still consider it a good album and I have been listening to it a lot. So that's a 81/100 album. I must also point out that "Passenger" is already a contender to be among my top songs of the year. Prog fans, you can try Epigone with the confidence to have a good time.

SCORE: 81/100

Genre: Progressive Metal

Released by Century Media Records on January 7th, 2022

Rating System

99 - 100 Perfect
94 - 98 Excellent
87 - 93 Great
82 - 86 Very Good
77 - 81 Good
66 - 76 Mixed
58 - 65 Bad

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