There are moments, as a writer, when you open a press email, scan a genre list that reads like someone fell down the Metal Archives tag section and hit select all, and immediately, instinctively, you brace for impact. Not the good kind either, the ‘this is going to be a confused and unlistenable mess’ kind. Because let’s be honest, when a release claims to be Black Metal, Death Metal, Folk, Melodic, Atmospheric, probably a bit of interpretive dance on the side, nine times out of ten you’re about to sit through something that collapses under its own ambition.

And then, very, very rarely you get something that actually pulls it off.

Enter Age of Tree by Wooden Shadow.

Released through Inverse Records, this five-track EP comes branded as Melodic Death/Black/Folk Metal, which usually translates to ‘we tried everything and hoped something would stick’. Instead, what you get here is a record that not only understands those elements, but actually knows how to make them work together without sounding like a Frankenstein monster stitched together in the dark.

And the most amazing thing about it is it’s all the work of one man, Jeremia Ponto. Every instrument, every vocal line, every shift in tone comes from a single creative mind. No bandmates to bounce off and no one to blame if it goes wrong. Which takes balls so big, I imagine he must have difficulty finding underwear that fits. That kind of setup can either lead to something laser-focused or completely unhinged.

Thankfully, this lands firmly in the former category.

Let’s start with the thing I usually hate more than lukewarm beer: intro tracks. The Dust opens the EP, and on paper it ticks every box that normally makes me roll my eyes so hard I risk seeing my own brain. It’s stripped back. It’s acoustic. It’s atmospheric. It doesn’t immediately punch you in the face. In other words, it sounds like the kind of intro that exists purely so the artist can feel important for a minute before the real music kicks in.

Except, it actually works.

The Dust isn’t just filler. It sets the tone in a way most intro tracks only dream of before they collapse into irrelevance. It leans heavily into the folk side of Wooden Shadow’s sound, building a sense of place that feels ancient, rooted, and just a little bit haunted. It’s the musical equivalent of walking into a forest where everything is a bit too quiet, like the trees are waiting for something. By the time the heavier elements start creeping in later, you’re already in that world.

And it’s the thread that runs through the entire EP. Not the intro. Not even the Metal, technically. It’s the Folk.

No matter how heavy things get, and they get properly heavy, there’s always that undercurrent running beneath everything. It’s in the melodies, the structures, the way the songs breathe. Even when the guitars are grinding and the drums are hammering away like they’re trying to wake the dead, there’s something older sitting underneath it all, keeping things grounded.

When the distortion kicks in properly, the shift feels earned. The Death Metal elements bring thick, driving riffs that hit hard without turning into a muddy blur. The Black Metal side adds that colder edge, especially in the drumming and the more abrasive textures. But instead of fighting each other for space, they slot together in a way that feels like a perfectly made puzzle box.

This isn’t genre-hopping. It’s integration.

And then there are the vocals.

Ponto doesn’t settle for one approach, and more importantly, he doesn’t need to. Across the EP, he moves between deep, guttural growls, harsher Black Metal rasps, and cleaner, almost operatic passages without it ever feeling forced. These shifts don’t come across like a checklist, “right, time for the black metal voice now”, they feel tied to the emotional direction of the music.

Sometimes those changes happen within the same track, flipping the mood on a dime without breaking the flow. It’s the kind of thing that can go horribly wrong in less capable hands, turning into a messy showcase of “look what I can do.” Here, it feels controlled. Purposeful.

That control extends to the songwriting as a whole. At five tracks, Age of Tree doesn’t overstay its welcome. There’s no padding, no sense that anything is here just to bulk out the runtime. Each piece serves a purpose, whether it’s building atmosphere, delivering impact, or shifting the emotional tone. The pacing is tight without feeling rushed, allowing the EP to move through different moods without losing cohesion.

And that’s not an easy balance to strike, especially when you’re working across multiple styles.

One of the more impressive aspects of the release is how it handles dynamics. It’s not just loud all the time, which is a trap a lot of heavier records fall into. There are moments of restraint, room too move where the intensity pulls back just enough to make the next surge hit harder. That push and pull keeps things engaging, stopping the heavier sections from becoming numb through repetition. For a one-man project, that balance is crucial, it keeps the music feeling alive rather than overly processed.

Lyrically, Wooden Shadow leans into themes that fit the sonic landscape: nature, mortality, and the darker corners of the human mind. It’s territory that could easily slip into cliché, but it’s handled with enough sincerity to avoid feeling like a paint-by-numbers exercise. There’s a reflective quality running through the material, tying back into that underlying folk influence, less about shock value, more about atmosphere and introspection.

What really stands out, though, is the sense of identity. For a project that pulls from so many different influences, Age of Tree never feels like it’s trying to be anything other than itself. It doesn’t chase trends. It doesn’t water things down to be more accessible. It just commits fully to its own sound and lets that speak for itself.

That’s probably why it works as well as it does.

Because at the end of the day, the biggest problem with most genre-blending releases isn’t the number of influences, it’s the lack of focus. Bands try to do everything at once and end up doing none of it particularly well. Here, the influences are tools, not crutches. They’re used to build something cohesive, not to show off.

So yeah, file this under ‘pleasant surprises’. What looked like it could have been a messy, overambitious genre soup turns out to be a tightly constructed, emotionally varied EP that actually understands what it’s trying to do. Age of Tree doesn’t just throw Black Metal, Death Metal, and Folk into the same stew and hope for the best, it weaves them together into something that feels natural.

It’s heavy when it needs to be. Atmospheric when it should be. And always anchored by that underlying sense of something older, something just beneath the surface.

Age of Tree is out now.