Band:	Wijlen Wij
Album:	Wijlen Wij
Style:	Funeral doom metal
Release date:	June 06, 2007
A review by:	Lucas

01. L'anathème
02. Wijlen Wij
03. Offertorium
04. Falling Stars
05. Aware Of The Void
06. Bridges

Wijlen Wij is nothing short of a Funeral Doom All Star band. With members such as Kostas Panagiotou (Pantheist), Kris Villez (Pantheist) and Stijn Van Cauter (Until Death Overtakes Me, the abomination that is Beyond Black Void, the list goes on) the term is very suitable. My sincere apologies go to Lawrence Van Haecke by the way, the bass player of Wijlen Wij, as I have no idea who he is. But here's the deal. While a lot of the bands I just mentioned are critically acclaimed and enjoyed worldwide, most of them do nothing for me. So when Wijlen Wij released their début album in '07, I just let it slip by me with total indifference.

And well... I was wrong. But I was right, too. You see, with members such as Kostas and Stijn you just know they will come up with something of high-quality. They know the genre "Funeral Doom" better then anyone and that's the crux. It's just nothing, nothing new. But still, the album is good enough to render criticism of such kind wholly unimportant. The music revolves around these aspects: slow drums, tragically slow riffs with a Beyond Black Void-type of fuzzy droning distortion, deep growls, occasional chanted vocals and elusive synths. And when they do kick the speed up a notch to raise intensity, they pull off the 'deep sea / brooding waters / Chtulhu lurking' thing pretty well.

In the past few years Funeral Doom has exploded to the point where it almost seemed like for every inhabitant of the world there were three or four different projects. And because it expanded so quickly in such little time, a lot of bands lacked heavily in the originality department, as well as simply lacking quality. Cause let's face it, it's not that hard to record a Funeral Doom album. It takes no extreme technical skill, nor does it require vast amounts of money spent on equipment and studios. But to create that suffocating, dense and ominous atmosphere which Funeral Doom is about – that is the difficulty. Wijlen Wij are not the ultimate Funeral Doom band that brings this world to eternal darkness. But they are a high quality act with a damn (gasp!) enjoyable début album and they achieve with ease what the genre set out to create.