01. Flowers Of Earth
02. Toil In The Undergrowth
03. Betrayal Of The Self
04. Cerebral Drift
05. Metric Of Grief
06. Precede The Flint
07. Scorched Hinds

Bands in the sludge metal and post-metal genres tend to have their music described, by myself and others, as being ‘thick’, ‘brooding’, ‘crushing’, and so on. Wren are no exception to this, or rather, they were no exception to this, but Black Rain Falls offers a slightly different tonal perspective.

Those aforementioned adjectives were ones used in my review of 2020’s Groundswells, an album that featured a dense, oppressive sound somewhat in the vein of Celestial by Isis, but with the contrasts and moments of levity one would expect from a post-metal band. Nearly 5 years on, Wren still occupy sonic territory that places them within the confines of sludge metal, but there’s a real spaciousness to and sparseness to the record that puts it slightly at odds with expectations, both for said genre and in light of their previous works.

That’s not to say that this is not a heavy album, either tonally or instrumentally, and there are tracks that are more closely aligned with the band’s heritage; among them is “Betrayal Of The Self”, a relatively lively effort (at least early on) with janky dissonance early on and a bludgeoning, lumbering conclusion. Still, even with that said, the textures, particularly in the song’s middle, are not assembled in a way designed to crush and overwhelm. Conversely, closing song “Scorched Hinds” is about as committed to bleak distorted heft as anything on the record, and feels the most like a successor to Groundswells sonically.

With them acknowledged, we can now turn our focus to what constitutes the majority of the runtime, namely slow, ponderous and deliberate compositions that range from outright sparseness to measured distortion. The album’s first two songs are its longest, and both of them begin with prolonged, slow, muted trudges, with the beginning of “Toil In The Undergrowth” reminding me a bit of “Ghost Trail” by Cult Of Luna. Each song eventually transitions into grimmer, thicker sludgy riffing, but even the more aggressive riff midway into “Toil In The Undergrowth” culminates with prolonged sustain on each repeat.

Each track eventually goes in its own interesting direction as the band flex their post-metal muscles, whether it’s the subtle atmospheric dissonance as “Flowers Of Earth” approaches its conclusion or the driving bass and melancholic guitar tone of the climax to “Toil In The Undergrowth”. In contrast, “Metric Of Grief” maintains a similar sound throughout, one that is subtly melodic, stoutly mid-tempo and restrained in its distortion, ambling along with textures that almost feel more related to alt-rock than the vulgarities of sludge. “Precede The Flint” also makes liberal use of cleaner, more muted tones, but it does at least have a surge of energy around the halfway mark on the part of the drums, which for perhaps the only time across the album abandon a rigid slow/mid pace in favour of a rapid, hectic drumkit workout.

It's an interesting direction taken by Wren here; pure, visceral heaviness is not the be all, end all for dark, miserable music, and the band do make effective use of the bleakness of sparsity and emptiness, in a way that bears similarities to noise rock as much as it does metal. That said, Black Rain Falls doesn’t completely hit the mark for me; for all the increased dynamism having this baseline of restraint might afford, there’s a bit of a lack of variation in tone across the record, in no small part due to the persistence with slower tempos. Also, with the exception of the final minutes of “Toil In The Undergrowth”, I have found myself struggling to identify standout moments that rise above the general vibe of the album. I find it to be a solid album, but one that is slightly limited in its ultimate impact.