Review: Walls Within – WWII

Rising up out of the New Mexico desert comes Albuquerque’s Walls Withina four-piece metal outfit, offering up a meaty, heavy set with their album, ‘WWII.’

From the opening track, “Numb,” through the last track, “Faceless,” Walls Within takes us on a straight-forward ride that mixes rock, metal, goth, industrial, and even a little funk. Even with such a broad sphere of influences, WWII is a tight, solid line up of tunes. Despite the band’s influences being obvious, they’ve managed to blend them into a homogeneous sound that sets them apart in the underground, but would put them comfortably at home with acts such as Rob Zombie, Disturbed, and Paradise Lost. You’re not gonna find speed or technicality on this album, but you will find a track listing that from start to finish is consistent with itself and its ability to get your head nodding. While the consistency is a good thing, in this case I find that it’s also one of the few problems with the album–the songs are individual and unique from one to the next, maintaining the band’s sound without any deviation, but that also means that there’s no “up and down” to this album. The pacing of each track is so similar to the one before and after it that there’s no variation, no rise and fall of the overall pacing of the album, which is unfortunate, because there’s an emotive quality to the band’s sound that could really be amplified by that kind of variation. “Needles and Pins” is the one exception to this, opening with an angry flurry of double-kick drums matching some furious guitar riffing, but even it settles back into the same groove the rest of the album is in.

WWII is one of those albums, with its subtle goth and industrial influences mixing with some of its mainstream influences (check out the track “The End Of”), that evokes a sense of the dark and mysterious. It’s the kind of album that creates atmosphere and sets a mood, making a great backdrop for folks who like dark club scenes, heavy smoke hanging motionless in the air, and the neo-Goth aesthetic. For me personally, it’s been a steady rotation album when I’m in a creative mode, and working on my writing or art, being the kind of thing where the consistency of its pacing and the atmosphere it carries makes for great passive listening, becoming one of those albums that’s useful for when I want to be “in the zone” while working. Overall, WWII is definitely an album worth recommending if you like dark, mood-setting, moderately paced rock that pushes itself right up against the boundaries of metal.

While not ground-breaking or overly innovative, Wall Within’s ‘WWII’ is a good enough album that it should make people want to find out more about them. I know that I’ll be keeping tabs on them to see what they do next, and I’ll definitely be looking for an opportunity to catch them live.

Check out Walls Within at www.wallswithinband.com

Walls Within is:
Chad Carpenter, Nathan Joseph, Chris Mattson, Lonnie McKnight
WWII Track Listing
1.Numb
2.Saving Grace
3.The Cage
4.Needles and Pins
5.24601
6.The End Of
7.My Virtue
8.Vows
9.Without
10.Faceless