West Wall - Conquest or Death

The original masters of the more rhythmic and percussive style of blackened death metal, sometimes incorrectly dubbed 'war metal', Conquest or Death sees West Wall put together rolling heavy counterpoint riffs in song structures inspired by bands such as Phantom and Incantation, with techniques of extreme brutal death metal involving percussive rhythm from muffled or double-picked power chords. Tone-centric riffing technique moves through doom like, slower passages to fast-strummed directional riffing in the style of Incantation, then the song returns to double-hit staging of counterpoint rhythmic intensity, where a thesis in structure and lyric rides a melodic space, and its antithesis, before finally reiterating the main theme in grandiose climax that owes as much to Suffocation as to black metal bands like Burzum and Absurd.

Blackened death metal is far from being the 'new kid on the block', but West Wall shows that even in well-defined styles there is always room for progress and innovation, as long as those remain the means to an end, and not the end in themselves. Much like Phantom and its contemporaries, the song writing on Conquest or Death is incredibly complex and sometimes difficult to follow, as is the case on albums such as Withdrawal to name only the best. West Wall skillfully avoid the modern metal pitfall of having good riffs - which they do have, and in spades - but having nothing to do with them other than arrange them in a radio rock verse-chorus structure, or throw them randomly into a riff salad. None of that on Conquest or Death, as the songs are so well constructed they will, at times, remind you of Vermin or Neraines. Every song sounds better than the last, and every time I listen, the extra variety makes it easy to throw this album on repeat for hours.

In addition to be excellent death metal, Conquest or Death is also historically important for its influence on the 'war metal' genre, most notably via bands like Warkvlt, Heresiarch or Desecresy who, like West Wall, use more melody and more elaborate song structures over the pure rhythmic intensity that war metal is known for.

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