Vain Valkyries – Wonders
Release Date: 20th March 2026
Label: Self Released
Bandcamp
Genre: Rock, Grunge, Mathcore.
FFO: Royal Blood, Mutoid Man, Melvins.
Review By: Jeff Finch
Brothers Ian and Simon Debeerst aren’t your everyday rock/metal duo. No. While these Frenchmen are likely very familiar with the Royal Blood comparisons given their European duopoly, as Vain Valkyries, they refuse to be pigeonholed. The resulting album, today’s focus Wonders, is seriously tight, very much sounding bigger than the sum of the parts, as any person unfamiliar would likely never guess this is just two brothers rocking out. The riffs are absolutely cavernous, carrying a massive sense of space and heft that fills every corner of the mix without ever feeling overloaded. There’s a real force-direction happening too: the guitar leans into these polyrhythmic, slightly unstructured patterns that feel like they’re constantly on the verge of slipping apart, while the percussion answers with this chaotic, almost daredevil energy, a destructively raw intensity to match the mammoth riffs. It shouldn’t hold together as well as it does, but that tension is exactly what gives the album its edge.
Stylistically, it’s got some of that Royal Blood-style tone (especially clear on Summer Days), the heaviness of Alice In Chains (peppered all throughout), flashes of The Mars Volta’s unpredictability (He Is Proud, Aching Lungs, Summer Days), and a melodic sensibility that harkens back toward Nirvana (peppered all throughout). Yet, it never feels like a cheap collage or a random mishmash of sounds just for the sake of chaos. Instead, it comes across as a band that really understands what makes those elements work and is actively trying to fuse them into something cohesive. The clean vocals tie it all together, adding just enough restraint to keep things from spiraling out completely, and making those stankface moments all the more impactful, because those ‘breakdowns’ do not sound like they directly followed impeccably rendered clean vocals. The chaos, heaviness, and erratic behavior of some of these songs are such that by the next song, a listener has no idea when or how it will kick in, just that it will. While they truly blend those aforementioned comparisons into one killer unit, at this point it feels less like imitation and more like a foundation they’re building on. They know what they like, they know what they can do, and they combine it to make some of the best rock I’ve heard in a long time. This is a confident step forward: louder, tighter, and more distinct.
(4 / 5)
