REVIEW: DEATH WOLF - Death Wolf

 

DEATH WOLF - Death Wolf (2011)

Regain Records

New name, same band. Death Wolf started out as Devils Whorehouse, and under that banner they put out two EPs and two full-length albums. Why they changed the name, I can’t say. Maybe someone with more patience than me will go digging. Black metal fans might like to know the band was founded by Morgan of Marduk, and that alone says something about where these guys come from. The new name comes with a self-titled album on Regain Records, so that’s enough of the background. Let’s get to the music.

What you get here is old-school, and I mean really old-school. Put this on and you’re back in the first wave of extreme metal, with that dirty N.W.O.B.H.M. sound that Venom and Atomkraft made famous, plus a bit of Motörhead and some punk attitude thrown in. If you love Hellhammer and early Celtic Frost, you’ll catch a few familiar echoes too, and the rough, unpolished production fits the whole thing nicely.

It all sounds great on paper, but the album can’t keep it up. The first few songs are good. Then the riffs start repeating, the song structures blur together, and the same ideas keep coming back. Somewhere along the way I realized I’d stopped listening, and the last tracks went by without leaving a mark. A shorter tracklist, or more variety in tempo and mood, would have helped a lot.

So who is this for? Mostly the die-hard fans of 80’s extreme metal, the ones who need every release the genre has to offer. Everyone else should hear it before buying.

Nick Parastatidis