WESENWILLE is a two piece Black Metal band from one of my favourite places in the Netherlands, Utrecht. “II: A Material God” is their second full length album and their first on the excellent Les Acteurs De L’Ombre Productions, who have been in the business of putting out sonic experiments of multiple variety and amplitude. Anyway, we need to talk about the cover art for a moment, this is the photograph titled “Wall Street” by Paul Strand taken in 1915. The faceless, nameless shapes that are getting to work on a grey day against a backdrop of a multinational banking giant is all you need to know. This is one of the spectacular photographs ever taken to showcase the human condition and I was immediately amazed to see WESENWILLE use this as their cover art, which tells us a lot, even before we get to the album. WESENWILLE builds a sonicscape with every single track on the album, each serves a different purpose and yet manages to entwine itself into the fabric of human condition. It’s very easy to quickly label this as a form of Black Metal, but that is exactly what it is, atmospheric, strategically dense with no excesses spilling anywhere. The dissonant guitars are fantastic and add in further depth to the message, the drumming is tight and builds up the momentum of the entire album. It is quite impressive on the whole, some of the guitar pieces remind me of the atmosphere employed by Dark Metal bands. No, it doesn’t go on and on into oblivion, but it is rather quite dispersed with its destination whilst not losing its way. I quite like what I hear and would definitely recommend “II: A Material God” to Metal fans in general. It is important that a release like this be known across fans of genres because everyone pretty much has a takeaway from the message here. Recommended. For more info, please visit: www.facebook.com/wesenwille, www.facebook.com/ladloproductions