WHEREAFTER: Blessed & Depressed (HEAVY METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

With “Blessed & Depressed”, Whereafter delivers a dense yet concise debut album: 13 tracks for just 32 minutes of music. It's a compendium of energy, where alternative rock with sharp riffs blends with a few touches of scream, without revolutionizing the genre but seeking its identity in an immersive, introspective approach.

The album opens with 'Let's Talk', an introduction that resembles an entrance protocol. A sizzling voice, as if captured through an old transistor, spells out instructions, giving the impression that the listener is about to plunge into a psychological experiment. Then comes 'Blind Heart', the single, which emerges like a discharge of raw energy, the first real test of this immersion: sharp riffs, palpable tension, catchy chorus, gravelly vocals, the band doesn't do things by halves.

From then on, “Blessed & Depressed” oscillates between moments of impact and moments of breath. Familiar', 'Shadow Circus' and other tracks display a constant intensity, supported by alternating more ethereal or immersive interludes. The latter are not mere transitions: they reinforce the record's dynamism and add a layer of ambiguity to the whole, as if each pause were part of the process, like Dredg on “El Cielo”. However, while this mechanic works, it sometimes struggles to achieve the same emotional depth as its references.

But it's in its finale that the album reveals all its strangeness. 'Crooked Line', a pared-down acoustic ballad, suddenly breaks the accumulated tension. Its simplicity stands in stark contrast to the album's electric ambience, as if the intensity of the experience required a moment's reflection. Then comes 'You Are Not Alone', and everything changes. This last track sounds like a message from another era, an escaped tune from the 1930s or 1940s, whose strangeness disturbs as much as it fascinates. Is it a comforting conclusion or the last illusion of a world that's collapsing? The retro atmosphere lends the track an almost post-apocalyptic dimension, evoking the world of Fallout, as if the whole album had been one program, a simulation on the frontiers of consciousness.

“Blessed & Depressed” doesn't seek to redefine alternative rock, but it does succeed in offering an intriguingly immersive approach. The mechanics are sometimes uneven, but prove that Whereafter has a vision and knows how to play with codes to better blur the reference points. An imperfect but audacious first attempt, which makes you want to see how far the band can push its concept in the future. - Official website

WHEREAFTER

BLESSED & DEPRESSED

AUTRE LABEL

HEAVY METAL