WRAITHS


Haunting the dank crypts below Edinburgh's cobbled streets, Wraiths seek to reify the shambling masses abandoned by God during the plague-years of this fog-bound city. These two tortured priests take the hymns of their past lives and pervert them into vast walls of howling sound; a blood-flecked gobbet of phlegm in the eye of their one-time Lord. Playing instruments as broken and wretched as their own decaying bodies, Wraiths conjure their blasphemous noise with no assistance from the modern world's difference engines and thinking machines. Wraiths are the horror of infection.

None shall escape the harrow of the plague. Recorded live and under ritual conditions, Oriflamme was Wraiths' first creation. The insanely limited CDr release was quickly consumed by collectors of the truly profane and now this vinyl presentation has been ordained by the ghastly monks themselves in conjunction with Aurora Borealis. Blackened death-ambient drone meets howling, metallic noise.

Over their short period of activity, Wraiths have released two well-received CDs (with glowing reviews from Terrorizer, The Wire, Rock-a-Rolla and Aquarius Records) and have played live with acts as diverse as The Law-rah Collective, High On Fire and Chicks On Speed; producing ferociously loud sonic blasphemy wherever they can set up their arcane devices.

"Oriflamme pt. I" excerpt.

Review from BOOMKAT:
"Finding a new Aurora Borealis release on my desk is always a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the music is always exciting - always at the dark vanguard of avant-doom exploration, however I can never read a word on the sleeve on account of the more-metal-than-thou typefaces. Who's the artist? No idea. What's the record called? Beats me. This isn't the world William Caxton imagined. Okay, so after a bit of a squint I've determined that this is the debut recording by Edinburgh noise overlords Wraiths, who originally released this barrage of dark vapours as a CD-R. The death ambient textures and shifting, acidic tones stretch across a punishing forty minutes, maintaining an evolving narrative of painful, cumulous distortion. Wraiths dispense sounds from the very darkest recesses of doom metal but with all the defined edges of conventional instrumentation smudged and corroded, leaving only a vast, looming shadow in their place. "

Past reviews:
"An expansive drift through bleak landscapes of dubbed out rhythms, and shimmering industrial whir, black swells beneath, grey swirls above, often building to full on cacophonous noise-psych freakouts. Murky worlds of drone and distortion, smeared into soothing and serene drones. Haunting vocals and anguished howls drifting way down in the mix. Full on wall of keening sound, high end harmonies of corrosive downtuned buzz and ear splitting upper register skree, harsh and heavy but completely mesmerizing in that crumbling wasteland, edge of the black abyss, doom drenched blackened ur- drone sort of way. Killer stuff." - AquariusRecords

"Their panoramic Industrial rumble is cinematic in scale, increasing in volume from the whirring of electronic wasp wings to jet engine roar with all sirens blaring." - The Wire

"Their music is some of the heaviest IÕve heard, an improvised whorl of thunderous bass-heavy cracks, distorted screaming and ritualistic plague- drumming. The sound is absolutely vital: bleak, yes; noisy, incredibly; but possessed of a fundamentally true sense of pain that it cannot help but articulate a glimmer of hope. Ferocious and ambient at once, Wraiths are not to be missed." - RJ Thomson in The Skinny



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