I can say that it has been cathartic, in a sense. There was a lot to get out and after so much time away from playing, it was fulfilling to see that, yeah, we still got this. There were moments where I worried that it would never be finished or never get heard by anyone. It was good to be so wrong.

There was a 4 year wait for the new album, and while that’s not a super long time between albums. it seems like Woe was completely out of the limelight for the whole time- was Woe close to being done in that time?

We were very “done” in the sense that there was no activity for most of that time, but there was never a point where I thought it was necessary to make any kind of dramatic pronouncement about the state of the band or its future. That shit is too showy for me. We’re fortunate to not have to tour full-time or work on anyone else’s schedules. With no expectations or obligations, there will probably not ever be a reason to say “we are done,” so we just kept kicking it down the road until we were ready. 

Was the reaction to Withdrawal part of your time away? It seems like after 2 albums that had you on the cusp of USBM ‘stardom’, things fell off a bit.

The reaction to Withdrawal was strong — stronger overall than Quietly, Undramatically, which was an extremely polarizing album. The writing, recording, and touring process for Withdrawal spanned from 2012 until the very end of 2013. After that, my mother got sick, I needed a career change, and the band lost two members. I needed time away without having to think about music at all, I just did not have the bandwidth for it.

There is no such thing as USBM ‘stardom’ as far as I am concerned. I can think of maybe three black metal-rooted bands in the entire country who are able to shower regularly on US tours. We were never close to that and I doubt that we ever will be, which is fine.

 Looking back at Withdrawal, is there anything you would have done differently? it seems like the scene and sound at the time played into that album a little bit.

Each Woe album was what it was supposed to be and what it needed to be in order for us to get to where we are now. The scene and the sound at the time never influenced anything at all and still doesn’t; in fact, a fair amount of the riffs on Withdrawal were written around the time I was writing Quietly. The songwriting influences have always been consistent, but I experimented more with dynamics and the balance between the metal and non-metal influences, and that led to some weird places. They’re not my favorites to listen to but I’m still proud of them for what they are.

After a truly stellar debut as a one man project, has there been any internal discussion of returning to a one man project or will Woe be a full on band from now on?

I doubt it. Playing live is too important and I like being able to narrow my focus and trust everyone else to do their parts better than I could. I’m still doing all the writing, but having the other guys to give feedback and call me on any bullshit is great. The band experience is more fulfilling than working solo.

Why the change from Xos for the debut to your real name?

Haha! I fucking hated going by a black metal name. So fucking uncomfortable. I did it in the beginning cause I was young and it was the black metal thing to do, especially at that time. But I realized quickly that there was no better way to feel like a fucking idiot than by using a fake name, especially since the songs were coming from such real places. This isn’t an indictment of anyone who wants to use a metal name, I think it’s totally metal and the right thing to do in some contexts, but it was not right for Woe. Dropping it was an important step in being willing to create my own sound and identify for the band.

The new album feature 2 new members Lev Wienstein (drums) and Matt Mewton (guitars)- how did they contribute to the album or is this all you, and they play what you write?

I wrote and demoed the entire album before the guys learned it, but I knew that they’d be playing on it and tried to keep their preferences in mind as I worked. Lev and Matt always called me out if I went too Deftones with anything, so I’d sometimes fall back on that as a way to justify cutting a riff or pushing a song in one direction or another.

But there was more to it than that. There is one song, “The Ones We Lost,” that the three of us (G lives in Philly still and wasn’t at rehearsal that night) collaborated on to improve the instrumental section before the vocals start, which is why they have a writing credit in the album. Matt and I worked on some leads, he also wrote his solo in “No Blood has Honor.” Everyone got links to every iteration of every song, so they were able to give as much feedback as they wanted throughout the process, which they did to some extent. Grzesiek (Czapla) was truly a co-producer and helped shape the feel of every song in really critical ways.

Talk a little bit about the album title and the cover there seem to be some very real world, ominous messages in there.

The title, the art, and the album are reflections of profound powerlessness in the face of uncaring force. I could say “systems of oppression,” which might sound awfully punk rock, but it’s bigger than any one political, religious, or social system. It’s about the way we organize ourselves to trample on others. Each song deals with this in different ways, but it all circles around the same themes.

The song “The Ones we Lost” seems very somber and personal, lyrically and in style compared to the rest of the album- is it about someone in particular?

I and a few of the other band members lost some family and friends in the past few years. It was motivated by them and I tend to think about different people every time I play it, but it’s not about anyone. It’s about the cognitive dissonance between your physical reaction to a loved one’s death and the world’s lack of registering the change.

Is Woe ‘back’? What can we expect for the immediate and distant future for the band? 

We’re as “back” as we can be. We just returned from two weeks in Europe with Ultha. Some of the other guys have other recording and touring obligations, so we’re taking a few months off, then we’ll be playing at Shadow Woods Festival in September. We’re kicking around some other tour ideas and I’ve already started working on some new material. We don’t promise or trust anything that we can’t see, but it does seem safe to say that we will keep doing this shit until we have a good reason to hit the brakes.

http://www.woeunholy.com/

https://www.facebook.com/woeunholy/

Well, a couple of new members and a few years later, Grigg and Woe has returned to the fray, and in rather spectacular fashion, as Hope Attrition sees a furious return to form and deliver some searing, modern black metal that shares more in common with the debut and the second album.

First, the clean vocals are all but gone (they only briefly appear on “The Din of the Mourning”), with Grigg delivering with a fierce rasp and a more deathly bellow, that has a powerful presence. Second, the material is mostly much more black metal based as opposed to the slightly dirtier, punk/black/thrash elements that surfaced on Quietly, Undramatically. Hope Attrition is full of sharp, blistering tremolo picked majesty and melody that drop with a tangible intensity and resolve. You can tell Grigg has unleashed a few years of pent up frustration with the material.

“Unending Call of Woe” starts the album with a patient build before utterly exploding with contempt and today’s state of the planet and humanity in general. “No Blood Has Honor” continues the spite with another furious assault, though the song’s last minute hints at a more somber mood, cemented by the following short instrumental “A Distant Epitaph”.

The aforementioned “The Din of the Mourning” is other wise a winding, twisting number that has more in common  with Withdrawal, being the last pure black metal track on the album. “The Ones We Lost” seems a more personal track with a more morose undercurrent to the fervent assault. “Drown us With Greatness” gets the album’s stumbling mid tracks back on point with a straight forward, no nonsense tremolo picked assault. The album closes with one of the albums standouts in “Abject in Defeat”, with a really nice extended solo and a more melodic, yet melancholic mid section, that still has bite, but as it fades out you can almost feel a weight lifted from Grigg.

A fine comeback that has a definite aura of redemption, Hope Attrition should see Grigg and co back near the top of the USBM hierarchy, and hopefully we wont have to wait another 4 years for a follow up.

“I spent a ton of time focusing on the production,” says Grigg in discussing the album’s creation. “We examined what WOE created since its inception in 2007 and broke it down to its core elements. The result is something that is a synthesis of the strongest elements: the unstoppable black metal ferocity of A Spell For The Death of Man mixed with the bold dynamics and smarter, more direct and personal songwriting of Quietly, Undramatically. It is our most intense, our most cohesive, our most personal.”

Recorded at studios in New York and New Jersey during the latter months of 2012, Withdrawal is a robust and penetrating album. It benefits from 18-months of live performances; something unavailable to WOE in the early years. “This is music that was made to be performed live,” Grigg notes. “Working with other people keeps WOE fresh. They bring new ideas and perspectives, fill in the gaps of my own abilities, and keep things moving when I slow down. This is the first WOE album to include not just riffs written by others but entire songs. Ruston (Grosse, drums) wrote “Ceaseless Jaws.” Ben (Brand, guitar) wrote the initial draft of “Exhausted” and then we reworked it. It’s also the first album to include vocals other than mine: Grzesiek (Czapla, bass/vocals) doesn’t just do backups; he has entire verses in a number of songs and is more “second vocalist” than anything else.”

A/V Club calls WOE, “one of the best of a strong wave of young American black metal bands willing to play around with the boundaries of the genre.” Metal Sucks says, “sincere and relentlessly creative, WOE put a new spin on an old method. The band crafts something that gives you a good sense of the possibilities that still exist in the genre. This is the sound of black metal to come.” Popdose adds, “WOE burns the black metal rule book to create something wholly unique and desirable.”

Originally launched as a one-man project, WOE released their debut, A Spell For the Death of Man, before teaming with England’s Candlelight Records in 2009. Their label debut, Quietly, Undramatically, was released late October 2010 and immediately found praise. Decibel called the album “an intriguing, revolutionary blend of black metal and shoegaze-tinged post-rock sophistication.” Terrorizer found it to be, “a raging slab of barely contained aggression, immeasurable parthos, and damn fine songwriting.” Shortly after release, WOE was invited to perform at the March 2011 Scion Rock Fest in Pomona, CA. The band would follow that up with a number of regional dates before heading out with Mayhem for their American tour later that year.

Withdrawal  Track Listing:

1. This is the End of the Story

2. Carried by Waves to Remorseless Shores of the Truth

3. All Bridges Burned

4. Ceaseless Jaws

5. Song of My Undoing

6. Exhausted

7. Withdrawal

Upcoming live dates for WOE are:

01/31/2013 St. Vitus – Brooklyn, NY

02/01/2013 Golden Tea House – Philadelphia, PA

02/02/2013 Strange Matter – Richmond, VA

03/08/2013 Gorham Brothers Music – Syracuse, NY

03/09/2013 Theatre Plaza – Montreal, QC

WOE’s Chris Grigg notes, “aided by more than a year’s reflection, I am pleased to present a remixed and remastered, 24-bit/48kHz version of Quietly, Undramatically. While I don’t think that anyone is ever satisfied with their music, this presents a vision of hopelessness that is at least closer to the original intention.”

Reviewing Quietly, Undramatically on its original October 2010 release MetalSucks notes, “sincere and relentlessly creative, WOE, like most decent black metal bands nowadays, put a new spin on an old method.” Popdose.com says, “the USBM scene needs more bands like WOE to take charge and push the genre forward,” while The Aquarian Weekly adds, “WOE are really just catching a foothold on the sound they want to make, and with the intricacy shown on these seven cuts, there’s the potential for them to accomplish something really special going forward.”

Candlelight has included WOE’s “A Treatise On Control” on a low-cost sampler that is also available at the label’s exclusive Bandcamp page. The sampler, titled Autumnal Equinox, features the reworked WOE song plus selections from Anaal Nathrakh, Sourvein, Abigail Williams, Discharge, Wolverine, The Living Fields, Havok, Extreme Noise Terror, and a song from the anticipated debut from Scotland’s Falloch, released in North America today. To have a listen or to purchase the sampler click HERE.

WOE will join labelmates Abigail Williams to tour alongside Mayhem in November. Comments Grigg, “we are really looking forward to returning to the road in November in support of Mayhem for the first leg of their tour.  This will be WOE‘s first visit to a number of cities and we are grateful for this opportunity to consume your alcohol, offend your women, and bring our stink to your homes.”

Confirmed WOE dates with Mayhem are:

11/04/2011 Trocadero Theater – Philadelphia, PA
11/05/2011 Montage Music Hall – Rochester, NY
11/06/2011 Palladium – Worcester, MA
11/07/2011 Imperial de Quebec – Quebec City, QC
11/08/2011 Mavericks – Ottawa, ON
11/10/2011 Opera House – Toronto, ON
11/11/2011 Peabody’s – Cleveland, OH
11/12/2011 Blondie’s – Detroit, MI
11/13/2011 Reggie’s Rock Club – Chicago, IL

Well, for starters, Quiet, Undramatically is neither quiet nor undramatic, in fact being rather loud and definitely dramatic. And brilliant to boot.

The first thing fans of the first album will notice is that the overall tone and presence of the sound is much dirtier and grimier than the debut. And while I’m not a huge fan of the new drum sound, its gives the band a bit more bite and character. There’s also a bit more punk and black thrash lurking amid the tremolo picked fury. What’s not changed is Grigg’s ability to craft seething, yet melodically urgent riffs that command attention. Also, there’s no post rock, no haughty ambience, but just the right amount of atmospherics (some well utilized clean vocals, some song transitioning acoustics), tinge the gritty tone.

After nondescript intro “No Solitude”, “The Road From Recovery” tears into the listener with a raucous punk fueled rage, but as you think Woe has turned into Infernal Stronghold (which would not be surprising, since they share a member), but at 4:17, Woe unleash a truly magnificent melodic segue that ends the song in a vicious, hair pulling skin grabbing, lip biting climax. The 7 ½ minute title track follows with a varied, shimmering assault of frosty but fuzzy chaos (the opening riff is one of those ‘perfect black metal riffs), and Grigg’s first use of clean vocals. They are well done and add some soul to the chaos rather than just piecemeal atmospherics, again the track ends on a slicing-ly brilliant melodic high note.

After two truly attention raping tracks, “A Treatise on Control” is initially a bit of a let down, but about halfway through, takes a now typical Woe shift into sublime, melodic excellence and then the short blast of “Without Logic” is a bristling punk/black thrash attack, showing that Woe can bare some sizable, nasty teeth amid all the tremolo picked harmonics. Closer “Hatred Is in Our Hearts” epitomizes the album mixing Woe classic black metal throes with gang chants and uncompromisingly nihilistic blackened thrash that sees Woe carve out their own niche amid the US black metal scene without bowing down to either forced brittle Scandinavian worship, post rock injections or self loathing depression.

At 43 minutes and 7 songs, Quietly, Undramatically seems like a quick listen, but with the 12 minute “Full Circle” taking center stage and drawing the listener into a sonic wormhole where time does not matter, and the fathomless cascade of riffs transcends your very being with each listen.

Grigg and Co have crafted something special here. Krallice, Cobalt and Wolves in the Throne Room special, but without sacrificing the raw tenets of black metal ancestry.

Formed in 2007, WOE originally began as a solo project of Philadelphia-based multi-instrumentalist Chris Grigg. Popular site Metal Review called WOE’s debut, A Spell For The Death Of Man (2008/Stronghold Records), “easily 2008’s most criminally overlooked album” while Mouth For War notes, “balancing technical mastery with desolate atmospherics, A Spell For The Death Of Man shears through the fabric of society with ferocious aggression and a hatred for mankind.” Teeth Of The Divine adds, “WOE turns out to be one of the very best pure black metal bands I’ve heard is some time. It captures the misanthropy, tortured melody, scarred atmospherics and introspective, craggy nihilism of the genre.”

Reveals Grigg, “Quietly, Undramatically is a major step forward for WOE. Not only is it our first release for Candlelight Records but the debut of WOE: the band as opposed to WOE: the solo project. The performances of Evan Madden (drums) and Shane Madden (bass) bring WOE to a whole new level. It is a much more mature album, featuring dynamics and ideas that WOE has never been able to tackle before. We are all very excited for this album’s release and the subsequent live performances in support of it!”

Quietly, Undramatically is WOE’s first release for England’s Candlelight Records. The album reunites the band with designer/illustrator Justin Miller. “Justin and I have worked together on different projects for years now and he has never let me down. I consider his art an additional song on the album — the most important song, the one that ties it all together. Sound is what I do, sight is what he does, and it is a relief to know that WOE‘s presentation is handled with such feeling.”

Track listing for Quietly, Undramatically is: 1) No Solitude, 2) The Road From Recovery, 3) Quietly, Undramatically, 4) A Treatise on Control, 5) Without Logic, 6) Full Circle, 7) Hatred is Our Heart.

WOE will celebrate the release with a free performance, along with labelmates KRIEG, at Philadelphia’s Kung Fu Necktie (1248 North Front Street) on October 28.  For additional live performances visit the band’s recently redesigned site at: http://quietly.WOEunholy.com.

http://www.myspace.com/woeunholy

http://www.myspace.com/candlelightrecordsusa

Yup! This terrific album is the brain child of Xos (or Chris Grigg) and while you’d typically expect the usual depressive lo-fi scrawl from a US (Philadelphia) one man black metal project, Woe turns out to be one of the very best and well done, pure black metal records I’ve heard in quite some time, capturing the misanthropy, tortured melody, scarred atmospherics and introspective, craggy nihilism of the genre in eight perfectly done songs.

The guitar tone is clean but raw and the bass is barely there as a steady background, but the guitars carry the show with a perfectly balanced mix of slice and dice riffs, mid-paced control, carefully placed, seething underlying melodies and just the right amount of ambiance and atmospherics. Grigg’s vocals are a pretty standard screech but are effective in glossing the music with the expected vocal fury that becomes black metal.

From the dreamy throes that delicately start 9-minute opener “Solitude” to fuzzed out, droning feedback of closer “Memento Mori” , A Spell for the Death of Man seems to drip emotion and angst edged with searing melody is a very Weakling sort of way, but with more polish and a more direct, deeply personal level of suffering and suffocating atmosphere. “Alone with Our Failures” and the blistering melody of personal favorite “Longing is All That Will Remain” (the section that starts at 4:23 is just intense) explode from the speakers with a precise contorted sense of precise, slicing harmonies. “Condemned as Prey” sees Xos spiting out some vitriol lyrics before the song unleashes a barrage of tightly wound, scathing but at the same time, depressive harmonies. My other favorite track “I See No Civilization” arguably has the most melodic riff, but it’s rendered with such a tangible sense of angst and emotional depth you can almost see wounds, physically and emotional, open before your eyes.

Behind Krallice’s debut, this had to be one of the most impressive debuts of US black metal and all the more impressive it comes from the mind and hands of one tortured individual without stepping over into full on depressive mopey-ness, but instead self cuts with a vitriolic sense of self loathing. There’s no doubt in my mind if I had heard this earlier it would have been mentioned in my year end list. I just hope Xos can keep this high standard for any forthcoming releases.