| CD REVIEW Wolf |
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Band : Wolf Hey, it’s been almost 2 ½ years since this Swedish Heavy Metal band’s previous outing The Black Flame (review by yours truly posted 29/09/2006)…so what happened? Well, to begin with the quartet set out for the road to promote the album through live work, touring in support of Trivium and Dew-Scented during December 2006, and playing at such festivals as Sweden Rock Festival (recorded and aired on Swedish national radio), Bang Your Head, Bloodstock UK, and Headbanger’s Open Air to name but the most important. After making a sensored version of the band’s video for “I Will Kill Again” (the original had apparently way too much blood in it), it was getting regular rotation on several TV stations. Then, songs like “The Bite”, “Steel-Winged Savage Reaper” and “At The Graveyard” also got heavy rotation on radio shows, including Bruce Dickinson’s Friday Rock Show, Total Rock Radio UK, P3 Rock Sweden, several US shows, and many more in Europe! The forward motion of the band was first set back for a while during 2007, when frontman Niklas Stälvind was diagnosed with an infection on the vocal chords, causing him to taking things quietly for a couple of weeks…just when the band was about to open on a series of Scandinavian Kreator and Celtic Frost gigs. During May the band was back on the road in the UK, playying support to the Haunted and Municipal Waste. Wolf was stuck with another bout of bad luck at the end of 2007, when the rhythm section of Mikael Goding (bass) and Tobias Kellgren (drums) had to be changed (no details were made available of what events prompted that necessity). They were replaced over the period of a couple of months by bassist Anders Modd and drummer Richard Holmgren (the latter entering the fold in early 2008). Rehearsals with the new people apparently gave the old guys an extra boost of energy, and after composing some new tracks, the band translated that energy in live conditions with wild stage performances! The band was unable to play any Summer festivals, as they were in pre-production for the album. The quartet then entered Studio Seven (from Sept. 17 to Oct. 18) in their hometown Örebro with highly acclaimed producer Roy Z. Having worked with the likes of Judas Priest, Bruce Dickinson, Helloween, Halford, Malmsteen, and so many more, before…he did a killed job at catching the band’s incendiary sound! In the band’s own words, “The recording was a delight as we knew Roy is a fan of Wolf…” (he’d first heard the band when a friend was cranking the band’s 2004 album through the car stereo) “…and also such a kick ass producer/ musican that he managed to bring out the be(a)st in us!”. By the way, if you’re interested, the band posted a studio diary on the blog part of their MySpace page (myspace.com/wolfheavymetal), where you can also find one track off the album (the great “Curse You Salem”) alongside several older songs , plus a video of the track “Voodoo”, alongside two others. Say, talking about Roy Z also being a darn good musician next to being a top producer…he’s played the acoustic guitar intro of “Blood Angel”. More guest musicians include Merciful Fate/ Force Of Evil guitarist Hank Shermann (must’ve been a wet dream come true for the guys) playing the first solo on the title track of the album, and Mark Boals singing backing vocals during “Love At First Bite”! The album is simply killer…which I cannot say about the download mode Century Media created for their promotional means: we do not get sent any promo copies of the albums anymore, but have to download ‘em from a protected part of their website. That wouldn’t even be so bad (although my editor-in-chief is considering quitting with the site if the tendency to start working this way spreads out too much), but apparently the download is bugged, leading to a missing track, another downloaded double, and the second part of the download having the tracks mixed up! I’ve no idea whether it’s their server or The Chief not understanding quite yet how it works (in which case they’ve made things too difficult, right?)…but I ain’t exactly pleased…which (hahah) is nót something I would say about the Ravenous material! Good heavens…the gréatest of high-end clean singing, wonderful Progressively tingued Heavy Metal, pounding drums, every element of the music coming through sóó wonderfully clean…what more can this Heavy Metal hearted music freak want for??? 90/100 Tony. |