Vehemency
From an aesthetic point of view, Ride for Revenge looks like a generic black / death / thrash metal band worshipping Hellhammer and Blasphemy, but in reality, the band is a real odd bird in that it focuses on bass-heavy atmosphere with rhythmic drums and occult lyrics. In fact, there is no guitar at all as far as I’m aware: Wisdom of the Few consists of mid-tempo drum patterns and ultra heavy bass guitar with some noise elements, most evident in ”Morning Won’t Bring a Twinkling Star” and ”Justification / The Circle Remains Closed”. This doesn’t come as a surprise, knowing Harald Mentor’s background in noise / experimental field.
What Ride for Revenge has managed to create is something truly unique, but at times Wisdom of the Few suffers from repetition in its 44-minute running time. A slight reduction in total playing time would have made Wisdom of the Few a more compact whole. The best moments are provided by the massive ”Dedicated to Destruction” with its bombastic drums and weird effects, the disturbing ”The Key of Knowledge” deserving the title of the oddest and the most unique track on the album.
Listening to Wisdom of the Few with high volume and exposing oneself to all the violent screeches and deep basses can be a nauseous experience so I can’t recommend this album for the most light-hearted; but those who find the combination of black metal and noise / experimental music interesting might want to check this out. Vinyl version comes in sweet, glossy gatefold covers so it is a really nice package.