Uada has had an interesting history. I became a fan of them with their stellar (and still best) album Devoid of Light. A solid slab of Melodic Black Metal, Uada cemented itself as a band to watch. Unfortunately, their outputs in 2018 and 2020 were overly long, and left me cold on the band once Djinn was out. Now, three years after Djinn, the band has released their fourth offering, Crepuscule Natura. Boasting a trimmed runtime compared to Cult of a Dying Sun and Djinn, this had me excited that Uada was going to go back to their initial style of tight, fun Melodic Black Metal. The album delivers that, but somehow they still haven’t shed the parts that don’t work.
The first thing that hit me when I listened to this album is how improved the production quality is compared to Djinn. Where that album sounded off by means of a bad mix, this album is easily the most pleasant to listen to since Devoid of Light. The songs on here are for the most part quite fun, with “The Dark (Winter)” and “Retraversing the Void” being standouts. Each of these tracks showcase Uada’s strengths: tight riffs, strong vocals, and a captivating atmosphere. It’s still Melodic Black Metal, and this band have never been bad at writing good riffs. However, each of these songs all share a common problem: bloat. Somehow, while this is Uada’s best since their debut, they still have not managed to get rid of bloated, overlong songs. For example, the closer “Through the Wax and Through the Wane” is a 12 minute behemoth that could easily be 6 or 7 minutes if the unnecessary fat was trimmed. This brings me to my chief complaint: Uada need to either get better at writing long songs, or quite simply not have every song on the album be over 5 minutes. That being said, I do think that this is an album worth your time. There’s enough interesting material on here to keep me coming back, and they’ve managed to trim quite a bit of bloat. My biggest hope for Uada is that they tighten up their songwriting and release a truly great album again, like they did in 2016. I know they have it in them somewhere.
