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Underground Sounds: Wayfarer – World’s Blood

Label: Profound Lore
Band: Wayfarer
Origin: United States

It’s hard to not draw parallels between Wayfarer and Panopticon because both embody atmospheric black metal that relies on the folklore of the United States. If the second embodies the northern wilds, than Wayfarer takes the west as their home and inspiration for their latest record ‘World’s Blood’, their third full-length release.

Featuring members of Cobalt, (ex-) Kitezh, Blood Incantation and Centimani, there’s a definite amount of experience in the formation. In a way, the band has captured the soundtrack to Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian’. Their use of dusty, sun-beaten soundscapes and long, meandering passages evokes the image of a frontier land, a lawless place where blood and gold are equally abundant. That alone makes this the music of its own mythology.
The way the album opens would almost suggest a stoner record, but then galloping pace hits full speed and you know this is something else. Yet, even the slow, atmospheric parts of ‘Animal Crown’ hold that mirage-like quality in the way the sound just shimmers into a whole. It takes the edge of the blistering tremolo riffs and feisty drum work in other parts of the song. Vocals are roared, in a bellowing, desolate form. This works just as well with the doomy ‘On Horseback They Carried Thunder’, which carries its own distinct mood of darkening skies in the desert. Barren, yet full of venom and threat.
That feeling of desolation is best conveyed on ‘The Crows Ahead The Warcry’. A slow, trudging track in parts, but when that melody line picks up its pace, you want to gaze at the sky, raise your arms and scream defiance. What a majestic showing, yet sticking right in that atmosphere with at thick nod to the might of the Nordic black metal gods. The sound shifts to something more ethereal and dreamy on ‘The Dreaming Plane’, which I suppose the title already gives away.
Yet the true brilliance of Wayfarer radiates on ‘A Nation of Immigrants’, with its acoustic play, distant, murmured vocals and folky string-picking. The thudding drums set that western vibe as well, taking you right to that frontline, where life is hard and rough. That’s the story Wayfarer tells us, which they do with a particular shine!