Wud Meant To Collide

Limited to 300 black copies. A few weeks ago, the first planetary defense test was successfully carried out: the Dart probe diverted the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos. With this Nasa operation we know, once again, that when we humans play god we are unstoppable, that we are not going to become extinct like the dinosaurs as long as progress makes us move. However, while this space shock was brewing 11 million kilometers away, here, more specifically in Torelló (Barcelona), a disc was being created that is like the Trojan horse of asteroids. Sin has made a crater or is going to do so; we are talking about Meant to collide of Wud. The second album of the band arrives three years after the debut Okeanos (2019), three are also the nuclear components that currently form it (and not the five before) and, again, three are the letters with which the name of the band remains (wud), previously they were called Wood. It seems that many things have changed in three years and that's right, the group has grown while it has been reduced and this new album testifies to that. The eight songs concisely concentrate the soul of the project. Although what they continue to love is the structured edginess of math-rock, they want the work to have punk-rock and pop constantly on the horizon, which makes the computation more digestible for all kinds of ears that like sharp-guitars music. Behind the songs we find Marc Fernández, Aleix 'Jimmy' Vilarrasa and Rai Costa, three friends of Torelló who for the last, almost, two years have been carrying out the recording. A long and arduous process that has gone through different studios, such as Fontderola by Jordi Casadesús and Jordi Torrents, or Lluerna by Èric Fuentes, but above all it has been hatched in their rehearsal room where they themselves have persevered in the attack to record a good part of the instrumental. The trio's bizarre ideas have been grounded with millimeter precision, faithfully capturing the centennial hyperactivism that accompanies them wherever they go. On the one hand, the songs trot lively and directed with a hardcore soul and rounded pop, on the other, if we look a little, we notice how the details of each cut are infinite, that the structures could be applied to the Sagrada Familia, that, in definitely, there is a lot of hard work. That the process has been laborious is also noticeable in the guitarist's lyrics, words spat out with the impatience of someone who doesn't want to waste another minute in the loop of self-destructive thought. Meant to collide is a fight between the two opposite and complementary parts of oneself, and I say two to simplify. Between the adrenaline side that wants to end everything through romantic escape and the other, the one that wants to reconstruct the fragments of memory to heal from serenity. From this very personal dispute comes a more than possible collision which, deep down, is what makes the group's creative drive advance and, above all, what makes the feeling that the songs are alive because they are lived intensely. Are we talking about emotions? Yes, thank God, because there such of this on the album, all the time, even in the instrumental interludes. The dreamy piano of “Barnum’s Circus”, the spectral autotune of “Lost Stars” or the Queens-of-Stoneagian guitar solo of “Cul-de-Sac” are at the service of the emotional magma of the musicians. The influence of highly emotional groups such as Delta Sleep (the English band performed one of the most memorable concerts for the wud crew at Torelló’s Arundo Fest in 2018), Algernon Cadwallader or Faraquet is noticeable. Over the years we are discovering where exacerbated technological progress is leading us: that's right, to collapse. Meanwhile, but, this band warns us that they have already arrived there and that humanity can be taken in abundance from there, in fact, there is nothing more human than collapsing.