Welcome back my fellow blackmetal heads! Its that wonderful time where we have a new review for you, and this one will be fresh from the black metal depths, as we look at Wiegedood. This is a band that has never been interested in following convention. Hailing from Belgium, this trio—comprised of members from the Church of Ra collective (including ties to Oathbreaker and Amenra)—has carved out a distinct place in black metal with a sound that is as furious as it is suffocating. Their early De Doden Hebben Het Goed trilogy established them as a force to be reckoned with, but with There’s Always Blood at the End of the Road, they’ve abandoned their past in favor of something even more chaotic and abrasive, so let’s dive in!.

As metioned, this album is a complete shift in tone from their previous work. Where the De Doden Hebben Het Goed records were expansive, occasionally melancholic, and rooted in atmospheric black metal, There’s Always Blood at the End of the Road is pure hostility—ugly, oppressive, and drenched in filth. It takes the feral nature of bands like Marduk or Revenge but twists it into something that feels more urban, more claustrophobic, like being trapped in a city alleyway where every shadow is hiding something dangerous.

The opening track, “FN SCAR 16”, immediately sets the tone. It’s not just black metal aggression—it’s black metal insanity. The guitars buzz like a hive of mechanized insects, while the drumming is relentless, a series of convulsions rather than traditional blast beats. And the vocals? Devoid of any humanity. They sound like pure bile being vomited onto a microphone. There’s no gradual build-up, no atmospheric intros—just raw fury from the first second.

Then the track “Until It Is Not”, which feels like a descent into madness. The riffs here are jagged and unpredictable, lurching forward with an almost industrial quality. Unlike their previous material, there are moments where the band lets the noise breathe, but instead of relief, it feels like suffocation. The use of eerie spoken word samples adds to the nightmarish quality, making it feel less like a song and more like a ritual gone horribly wrong.

One of the most interesting tracks on the album is “Now Will Always Be”, which breaks away from pure black metal aggression and incorporates elements of noise rock and even post-punk dissonance. The guitar work here feels more unhinged than ever, resembling something you’d hear in a Swans track but played at triple speed. It’s one of the standout moments on the album and showcases Wiegedood’s willingness to push the boundaries of what black metal can sound like.

The production on There’s Always Blood at the End of the Road deserves a mention as well. While it retains the raw edge essential to the genre, it’s not too lo-fi in the traditional sense. Instead, the mix is suffocatingly dense. The guitars are razor-sharp but never lose their weight, the drums are buried just enough to create a sense of overwhelming chaos, and the bass—when audible—feels like a living, breathing entity, rumbling beneath the surface like something that shouldn’t be there.

Lyrically, Wiegedood doesn’t deal in fantasy or mysticism. Instead, this album feels like a study in human filth—the kind of rot and degradation that festers in plain sight but goes unnoticed. There’s a profound sense of disgust that runs through every second of this record, making it one of the most nihilistic black metal albums in recent memory.

So where does this place Wiegedood in the larger black metal landscape? They’ve evolved past their atmospheric roots into something harsher, something more unpredictable. This isn’t black metal for the forest or the mountains—it’s black metal for the urban decay, for the hopelessness of modern existence.

With There’s Always Blood at the End of the Road, Wiegedood has crafted an album that refuses to offer comfort, instead reveling in the grotesque and the confrontational. It’s ugly, it’s violent, and it’s brilliant. If you’re looking for an album that captures the true essence of black metal’s most primal instincts, you won’t find many records as raw as this. The album can be streamed in full on their bandcamp page.