photos by Stephen Fletcher
Manchester, UK-based WODE prepares to release their savage fourth LP, Uncrossing The Keys, this Friday through 20 Buck Spin, who today unveils the entire album for streaming.
Uncrossing The Keys marks a confident expansion of WODE’s already formidable sound, built upon a shadowy foundation of feral black metal and ironclad heavy metal heft. Having evolved from the more straightforward methodology of the debut album, the band has continuously added elements from various dark corners of the underground across its discography, with songwriting that has grown leaner yet more intricate, focused and melodic than ever.
Uncrossing The Keys hasn’t softened WODE’s music, the sound remains steeped in flame and fury, but they’ve embraced a wider spectrum of moods, painting with blacker, richer hues than ever before. Jagged post-punk/goth leanings bleakly shine on new tracks like “Saturn Shadow” and the dreamy trance of atmospheric instrumental “Phantom.” The doomier pace and majestically pensive mood of single “Transmutation” recalls both Paradise Lost and Amorphis with its somber undercurrent, while the morosely anthemic “Under Lanternlight” is suffused with dynamic melodies in its Sentenced-like composition style. Guitars carry a mournful shimmer at times, their hooks laced with both melancholy and menace, drifting above the carnage with moments of elegiac beauty and dark lamentation. The hellish rasp of the vocals rise like ritual chants from another age.
Conjuring visions of a world perpetually on the edge of twilight, WODE casts a long, cold silhouette over the course of Uncrossing The Keys’ nine tracks. There’s a sense of both grandeur and decay, as though the band opened a gateway to a realm where cursed cities smolder under blood-red skies, their walls echoing forsaken hymns eternally. The result of a constant evolutionary process, WODE has crafted a truly haunted and commanding, blackened heavy metal that raises a dark banner high over a vast and desolate kingdom.
Uncrossing The Keys was recorded and mixed by James Atkinson at The Stationhouse (Carcass, Angel Witch), mastered by Magnus Lindberg (Tribulation, Wolfbrigade, Lucifer), and completed with artwork by Set33, photography by Stephen Fletcher, and layout/design by Envoy Of Death. Fans of Sentenced, Tribulation, Paradise Lost, Samael, Dissection, Tiamat, Melechesh, and Rotting Christ, should not sleep on WODE’s Uncrossing The Keys.
Stream WODE’s Uncrossing The Keys early only on YouTube RIGHT HERE.
Uncrossing The Keys will be released this Friday, October 3rd, on LP, CD, MC, and digital formats. Preorders can be found at the 20 Buck Spin webshop HERE and Bandcamp HERE.
WODE continues booking tour dates across the European continent. Expect to see new tour announcements to post throughout the months ahead.
WODE Live:
10/03/2025 The Attic – Glasgow, UK [info]
10/04/2025 The Lubber Fiend – Newcastle, UK [info]
10/12/2025 The Gryphon – Bristol, UK [info]
10/24/2025 Boom – Leeds, UK [info]
10/26/2025 Siege Of Limerick – Limerick City, IE [info]
11/22/2025 Gnarfest – Nottingham, UK [info]
12/05-06/2025 De Mortem et Diabolum – Berlin, DE [info]
2/27/2026 Star & Garter – Manchester, UK *Record Release Show [info]
“Throughout, WODE relish all the grit and grime of the local (obviously tumbledown) graveyard. Maybe that’s the rough-and-ready production or the Watain-like aesthetic sans stinky stuff… If the digital agonal breath of today’s bit-perfect vapidity has turned offensive, this sis the salve.” – Decibel Magazine
“…a confident evolution of their shadow-forged sound. Built upon the feral foundations of black metal and the ironclad weight of classic heavy metal, WODE have sharpened their songwriting into something leaner, more intricate, and more melodically rich than ever before.” – Metal Injection
“Their angle upon extreme metal once again siphons the hideous miasma of black metal noise away from its chaotic furor down into ‘70s and ‘80s build hard rock structures which collectively lends Uncrossing The Keys both foreboding and entirely welcoming traits in tandem. This time around their handle upon ulterior melodic black metal now transforms into something potentially more song and/or hook oriented while retaining most of the ear-scraping clangor they’d brought in the past.” – Mystification Zine
“…by far the band’s most expansive and dynamic album… The band excels at combining the melancholy of post-punk and the somberness of doom with black metal; however, they haven’t discarded or downplayed their blackened heavy metal style, as the album swerves wildly between darker experimental moments that are reminiscent of bands like Tribulation or Paradise Lost back into intense black metal and epic heavy metal classicism.” – Toilet Ov Hell
“…more people need to be talking about WODE, and hopefully Uncrossing The Keys is the album to do it. Feast your ears on the marvels of classic metal delivered under a blackened death metal roar.” – Echoes And Dust
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