Come, weary wanderer, join us around the fire here in the Folk Metal Corner of AMG. Look upon Resilience by Wandering Oak; does it not look at home here? Such indicators as the band’s name and logo, Resilience’s album art, and the big “folk metal” tag attached to the promo could only suggest the folksiest of metal. But wait, put down those lutes, I say, before you stumble into Wandering Oak’s trap! For you see, behind their aesthetic veil, Wandering Oak is actually a progressive blackened thrash band, incorporating elements from folk and classic heavy metal. Like a colossal, corpse-painted angler fish, Wandering Oak lured me in with the glow of folk metal before gnashing my huge beard in the jaws of furious riffs and anguished growls. If you’ve read this far, consider it too late for you as well.
Then again, Wandering Oak isn’t actually hiding anything. They wear their conglomeration of blackened thrash, folk, and traditional metal with pride, though as a whole, Wandering Oak’s bread and butter is black/thrash heaviness. These New Yorkers have been at it since 2015 with the release of Advent and then their 2019 follow-up Passage Elemental, and now Resilience sees Wandering Oak’s musical elements taken in a more progressive direction, with an emphasis on stream-of-consciousness songwriting. A song might open with blast beat insanity (“Snowbound”) or eerie jazz (“Vespertine”), before changing gears with a mournful flute melody (“To Lir They Fell”) or some buckwild thrash soloing (“Resilience”). The folky side isn’t pronounced enough for Eluveitie, the thrash isn’t progressive enough for Vektor, but the old-school riffs, full-spectrum vocal performance, and the dance between acoustic and heavy guitars give Resilience a thrash sound that borrows from both Skyclad and Wilderun.
Resilience is a lot of things, but is it good? Yes, but no. It has a vibrant, organic quality to its songwriting that wards off boredom, but it’s a double-edged sword that results in Resilience often coming across as messy. The breadth of different styles on display and the music’s boundless energy make the epic “To Lir They Fell” and “Snowbound” engaging to listen to in the moment, but their free-form structure subdues the overall impact. Every riff and melody bursts at the seams with creativity, but they need more restraint in their execution. The intensity gradually building in “A Florid Grain” and the spiraling-into-insanity theming of “Vespertine” demonstrate cohesion, whereas the music in “Resilience” evolves with such impulsiveness that you can hardly get a grip on what you’re hearing. The more time I spend with Resilience, the more I appreciate what method there is behind the madness, but the album’s overly chaotic nature alienates my enthusiasm for repeat listens, confining my enjoyment to the album’s duration and never beyond.
Wandering Oak’s musicians match the vibrancy of the music, to great effect. CW Dunbar’s drumming is on point throughout every musical idea that Resilience explores, and Deidre House’s bass is precise yet playful, the perfect kind of prog bass. Robert Pollard, the multi-instrumentalist front-man, exhibits both a solid range between many different growling styles and a deftness to his guitar playing, though some of his high-pitched wails in “Vespertine” sound strained, and there’s an imprecision to Resilience’s guitar solos with notes that are lost or flubbed. The mix gives the instruments some good depth, but it lets down Pollard’s clean vocals by giving them a baffling reverb and distance as if he’s yelling from across the room. Even with the imperfections, the warts-and-all expressiveness of the performances endears me to the potential of Wandering Oak. While the songwriting leans too hard on convoluted, high-energy complexity and ends up being too organic, the musicianship is at a sweet spot between raw passion and hard skill, and with more focus, Wandering Oak could truly soar.
Although there is good in Resilience, the unfortunate truth is that the album‘s simply too messy to keep bringing me back, and that breaks my heart. It’s rare to come across an album as earnestly weird as Resilience, and I think it should be celebrated despite its failures. I believe Wandering Oak has it in them to become an essential, unique voice in the scene; the musicians have the necessary talent, and now they have to tighten up their songwriting without losing that organic edge. Even if I won’t be returning to Resilience, I’ll be returning to see what Wandering Oak does next.
Rating: 2.0 / 5.0
DR: 11 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Self Release
Websites: wanderingoak.bandcamp | facebook.com/wanderingoak
Releases Worldwide: February 2nd, 2024
