We Sell The Dead – Black Sleep

We Sell The Dead
Black Sleep
earMusic Records
February 21, 2020

We Sell The Dead (WSTD) are a bit of a heavy metal anomaly; formed by Apollo Papathanasio of Spiritual Beggars and Niclas Engelin, one time guitarist of In Flames, the band was always destined to produce something interesting. The band unleashed their debut album, ‘Heaven Doesn’t Want You And Hell Is Full’ back in 2018 and now on the back of that success WSTD are back with their sophomore album ‘Black Sleep’.               Hell hath no fury like a follow up album and that is exactly what ‘Black Sleep’ is, this is an excellent dose of classic doom with modern hard rock influences and because of that, the cauldron upon which this is created makes ‘Black Sleep’ thoroughly addictive. This album is riff after riff of doom laden melodies that would drag in fans of Candlemass, Trouble and even Dio era Black Sabbath, but underneath this doom layer, that hard rock strata bubbles away, waiting to bust forth through the ground with memorable lyrics and passages that have all the appeal of modern Deep Purple or Europe that can be seen during ‘Carved In Stone’, ‘Across the

Water’ and ‘Caravan’ as Papathanasio’s dyed in the wool vocals deliver less of his work with Spiritual Beggars, but something a little more akin to Joey Tempest over the last few Europe albums. However, there are some more surprises in store here, ‘Shallow Grave’ and ‘Hour of the Wolf’ are some of the best work this band have ever recorded whilst ‘Scars in My Heart’ features the best twin guitar harmony riff that Iron Maiden never wrote. This is all packaged up in a beautiful production that screams out: “again! again!” after each play.

              Once again, WSTD have struck gold with an album which stands out amongst its peers; it does this because it is infectiously excellent. This is doom at its finest, ‘Black Sleep’ endears itself to replayability and anyone with a penchant for doom, classic and hard rock should go out and get this album immediately.