Woburn House are an unusual German band, but before I start ...I have used the genre "post metal" quite a lot in the last few posts I've put up, if you're not sure what I mean by this i would describe it as... bands who do generally lengthy songs taking the structures of post rock music like Godspeed You Black Emperor or Mogwai meld it with the heaviness and brutal attack of metal. (there are a plethora of bands i love that play what is known as post rock but most are very obscure and unknown I keep using Godspeed... and Mogwai for comparison as they are the best known and closest to what I'm trying to describe) I would put Woburn House in that category however they employ a far lighter touch and much less heavy approach to their music than some of the Post metal bands i have mentioned in the rest of todays posts, In fact i would actually say they are closer to post rock than post metal it's too heavy to be the latter but too light to be the former!, They have lengthy songs which progress and build but where you'd normally expect an avalanche of extremely heavy guitar to kick in it doesn't, they play it quite differently building the songs with good playing and dynamics without resorting to overdriving everything for pummeling effect prefferring to gently lull the listener in, whilst they do have reasonably heavy guitars here and there you really couldn't put a "metal" tag to this as it's far too melodic (The only truly "heavy" parts are in 1st track off their 2nd album). That being said Woburn House produce some utterly stunning and beautiful music their singer has a great smooth,melodic and easy on the ear voice more akin to a stoner rock type style than the usual quiet/loud roaring growls also some of the guitar textures are kinda sharp and chiming with the sort of wall of guitar melodies you'd expect from someone like early Husker Du or early Wire and the pace is generally mid-tempo throughout but the different styles of drumming deployed keep it interesting and are essential in the building up of the songs along with keyboards applied minimally but with great effect along with what sounds like some quite political movie samples which are pretty cool though i don't know what movies they took them from but the delivery of the voices on the samples make me think they come from old movies or mayber documentaries or lectures?.I especially like the sample used at the beginning of "Oil" from their 2nd album. All these elements together makes for a really fucking nice sound all round fresh and well produced and not too hard on the ear! I hear so many little bits that remind me of other bands in their music not that they are directly ripping anyone off or stealing riffs or beats just little things that make me think hey that sounds like they've been listening to.... However these are again one of those truly original bands that are a bit harder to pigeonhole however i would also say they maybe have a very slight Jesu edge to them in places without being as bombastic and full on layers of guitar upon guitar as Jesu.
So I've uploaded the first 2 of their 3 albums to date simply because their 3rd and most recent album "Sleep Summer Storm" in my mind isn't a really BAD album per se it just seems they have veered far to far into melodic territory and lost the original edge they had on the first 2. So you have "Message To Ourselves Outside The Dreaming Machine" their debut 4 tracks clocking in at 54 minutes the songs are fairly lengthy I would say it's maybe very slightly heavier than 2nd album "Monstrous Manouveres In the Mushroom Maze" which has 5 tracks that clock in at 58 minutes total so again the songs are lengthy but theres not much to add to the descriptions i've given above both albums are equally as good but i generally play "Monstrous..." More than "Message..." maybe because I heard that one first. Give these a try because again no one seems to have heard of them and their albums are just fucking LUSH and brilliant! Go try something new....
Message.... - Mediafire
Monstrous... - Mediafire
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