WODE – Uncrossing The Keys
Release Date: 3rd October 2025
Label: 20 Buck Spin
Bandcamp
Genre: Black Metal, Blackened Death Metal, Melodic Black Metal.
FFO: Sentenced, Tribulation, Paradise Lost, Samael, Dissection, Celtic Frost, Melechesh, Rotting Christ.
Review By: Magnus Rotås
Manchester’s renowned black metal band WODE return with their fourth album, Uncrossing The Keys.
The band has had an interesting history, starting out with their straightforward and savage black metal debut album back in 2016, before moving towards a more blackened death metal style on their sophomore album, then later taking the metal world by surprise with Burn by Many Mirrors, which incorporated a lot of traditional heavy metal into their sound. A controversial choice for many purists, but one that paid off, as it is now hailed by many as one of the most refreshing black metal releases in recent years.
Uncrossing The Keys finds the band leaning even more into what made the previous album so unique, with even more melody and bouncy heavy metal riffs. The question then is; have they gone too far this time?
The short answer to that is…no. If you liked their previous album, you are gonna like this one as well! There is definitely room for a black metal album with hooky riffs, great melodies and good production in a genre that often rejects all of that.
The opening track, Two Crossed Keys, starts off with a riff that sounds like it could have been on Slayer’s South of Heaven. It has this ghoulish atmosphere to it that makes it really cool. Think the foggy cemetery scenes of 1931’s Frankenstein, conjured into music.
This record harkens back to the first wave of black metal quite a bit, and fans of that era’s bands like Venom and Celtic Frost will certainly enjoy songs like Saturn Shadow!
Transmutation is a weird song, but one that has grown on me a lot since I first heard it, becoming one of my favorites on the record. I can only describe it as a weird mix of majestic and uplifting power metal but with a very slow and doomy core to it. It’s basically power metal for people who hate power metal, and I quite dig it.
The album does a wonderful job of painting an image in your head of stepping down into the dark, damp and chaotic dungeon from the artwork, using the simple but effective method of adding sound effects of a dungeon door being unlocked and closed on both the beginning and end of the album. It makes the whole album feel more cohesive and paints an image that stayed in my mind through the whole album, adding to the song’s atmosphere a bit.
The hellish rasp of the vocals sound great and sit very well in the mix. However, there is some emotion that I feel is lacking on the album. Perhaps it’s because the vocal delivery remains fairly similar, not really changing that much from track to track. The overly generic black metal lyrics don’t help either. They do the job, I guess, but feel completely impersonal, like anyone could have written them. And that’s my only criticism of Uncrossing The Keys. Hopefully, going forward, they can include more lyrics that feel meaningful to them, and convey more feelings through the vocals, to give these tracks some extra danger and bite.
Overall, the songs on this record are maybe a bit more inconsistent than their last album, but in turn you get more variety. This is a record that has a wide spectrum of moods, painting with more colors than most other black metal records of our time, and that makes it a fun and refreshing listen – one you definitely shouldn’t miss out on!
(4 / 5)
