OUR LIST OF 2022’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 21): WOLFHEART, BLACK ROYAL, KRINGA

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2022  2 Responses »
Jan 302023
 


Wolfheart

We’re getting down to the wire for this list. I’ve used that expression many times in many contexts without knowing precisely what it means or where it came from, but having checked the dictionary today I find that it’s an apt expression here. It means an outcome that’s unclear and unsettled until the last minute, the very end, and thus also means “full of suspense”.

Another source reports: “This term comes from horseracing, where it was long the practice to stretch a wire across and above the track at the finish line. It was extended to figurative use about 1900.”

With only tomorrow left to bring this list to an end, I feel suspenseful myself, because I have no fucking idea how to end it. Well, tomorrow is another day. Today I picked these three songs: Continue reading »

WOLFHEART: “KING OF THE NORTH”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 292022
 

(We present DGR‘s extensive review of the latest album by Finland’s Wolfheart, out now on Napalm Records.)

Right before Tuomas Saukkonen launched Wolfheart way back in 2013 as his only musical endeavor he had his musical tendrils spread pretty wide across a collective of projects. Over time he had become quite prolific, and each of those projects started to blur together save for one defining trait of each that was often the one identifiable thing that still made it that separate project.

Wolfheart‘s launch felt like an acknowledgement of that, coming soon after the release of the then-final Before The Dawn album Rise Of The Phoenix – and what a wild world that’s become with the recent release of the song “Downhearted” on that end – which in a lot of ways felt like a proto-blueprint for what Wolfheart would eventually become.

Even though Wolfheart began under auspices of being bitter cold and doomier flavored melodeath – which has been the core of many of Tuomas‘ projects – it didn’t take long before the high-energy blastbeat drumming and energetic aggression of the band became its trademarks; Wolfheart morphed into a band that was more often than not bathed in fire. The group’s final release with Spinefarm Records, Tyhjyys in 2017, contained two songs named “World On Fire” and “Call Of The Winter” for instance, if you’re hunting for the sort of dynamic that has come to define this group. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: UFOMAMMUT, GALVANIST, MÅNEGARM, KATHAROS XIII, BOG BODY, SIGN OF EVIL, WOLFANGER & WOLFHEART, VREID, WORMROT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Mar 192022
 


Ufomammut – photo by Francesca De Franceschi Manzoni

I hope your weekend is going well. Mine got off to a very good start this morning as I made my way through songs and videos that surfaced over the past week or so. By sheer good fortune, almost everything I listened to struck a chord, and the ones that rang loudest made its way into this big round-up.

I organized the selections in a way that made sense to me, capped by a shot of pure adrenaline. I’ll briefly tell you what to prepare for.

UFOMAMMUT (Italy)

Prepare for: a slow burn, a dreamy but sinew-triggering trip reminiscent of an old Pink Floyd space odyssey, with an increasingly fiery slug-fest as its destination. Continue reading »

A TALE OF TWO WOLVES

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 122021
 

 

(In this post our contributor Gonzo reviews two wolfish records which were released one week ago — and this dual review would have been published one week ago except for our editor (me) having been brutally distracted by his day job.)

I feel like the onslaught of high-quality albums we’re already seeing in 2021 is a promising sign. Either that or everyone’s going out of their fucking minds without shows, travel, and the requisite level of creative outlets. (Hopefully not for very much longer.) Whatever it is, it’s already March and this month is chock-full of music that sounds urgent as hell, commanding your attention when the rest of the world continues to unfurl from its unending corridor of suck.

Last week, though, we saw the release of new music from Wolf King and Wolfheart. If the old legends are true and there are in fact two wolves that live inside of us all, existing in a perpetual state of conflict over which one gets to wrest control of our collective psyche in some kind of moral struggle for the ages, then… I dunno, maybe they were just really into wolves? My metaphor game is leaving some serious shit to be desired today.

Fortunately, the music released by both wolves today is anything but lacking. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (OLD SCHOOL EDITION): ASPHYX, MEMORIAM, NERVOSA, WOLFHEART, MELVINS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jan 242021
 

 

We had a rare day with no posts yesterday. I spent most of my free time clawing through the hundreds of mostly un-read e-mails that had piled up in our in-box last week, and made a gigantic list of new music to check out, and then attempted to do the checking. I didn’t finish listening to everything because the list was so long. But of the new stuff I heard, the following collection kind of assembled itself.

I don’t think any of these bands require an introduction. All of their names are prominent. And all the songs until the last one have a pronounced old school death metal flavor. They’re also all heavy on the chugs, and the death metal tracks include uniformly ferocious vocals. Melvins obviously aren’t a death metal band, but their new song is also heavy on the chugs, and there’s also another reason why it fits in an “old school” round-up.

P.S. If you came here today expecting to find a SHADES OF BLACK column, be patient. It’s coming.

ASPHYX

As mentioned above, there are a lot of powerhouse vocalists in this collection I’ve assembled, beginning with the inimitable Martin van Drunen (a lot of people do try to imitate him, and to be honest, some do so with some success, but there still ain’t nothing like the original). Continue reading »

WOLFHEART: “WOLVES OF KARELIA”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jun 262020
 

 

(Here is DGR’s review of the latest album by Finland’s Wolfheart, which is out now on Napalm Records.)

If you’ve been following, with …And Oceans and Feastem having gotten reviews, Wolfheart marks three from Finland that had been hanging out in the backlog pile.

With the April release of Wolves Of Karelia, it is clear that by their fifth full-length album — their second for Napalm Records after their couple on Spinefarm — Wolfheart have found a pretty solid niche for themselves. Performing epic-length hybrids of folk metal, melodeath, and a very light airing of the sort of ice and melancholy that affects their region’s branch of the doom metal tree, Wolfheart have for some time now been the ultimate representation of frontman/guitarist and project owner Tuomas Saukkonen‘s musical consciousness.

In fact, up until the release of this year’s Dawn Of Solace album Waves — arriving nearly fourteen years after that group’s previous disc — Wolfheart has been his only project for the last seven years and was consistently dishing out enjoyable music, Wolves Of Karelia included (for the early spoiler), on a nearly two-year interval. Other than the addition of new guitarist Vagelis Karzis into the band’s ranks, Wolfheart remain largely unchanged from when they became a full group rather than just a solo project. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 1): KATATONIA, WOLFHEART, KRALLICE, OLD MAN GLOOM, MÉSALLIANCE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Mar 212020
 

 

After I finished today’s first post I spent almost two hours just going back through e-mails we’ve received over the last three days pushing new music upon us, and recent messages from some friends with their own recommendations, and then creating a list of links to everything that looked interesting. Some of these were new songs or videos and some were complete new releases.

When I counted up the number of links in that list, I found that there were 80 of them. Eighty of them, from just three days of new releases! I’m sure the Bandcamp thing on Friday (where they didn’t take their cut of sales) spurred a lot of this output, but even considering that it’s still insane.

Needless to say, I’m going to be resorting to the OVERFLOWING STREAMS format, in which I pare my own verbiage back to the bone (though I did include artwork this time). Also perhaps needless to say, I’ve barely made a dent in listening to those 80 items. But I’d like to get going with what I’ve found so far that I think is worth recommending, so here’s some of it now, and more will come in the next few days. (By the way, a ton of that new stuff was black metal, so I’ll have my hands full trying to figure out what to put in tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column).

KATATONIA

Who would not want a new Katatonia album in these dark, isolated times? The timing is indeed fortuitous, because a new Katatonia full-length will be released by Peaceville on April 24th. The title is also fortuitous: City Burials. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: WOLFHEART, WARDRUNA, DEVANGELIC, ON THORNS I LAY, TETHRA, BLAZE OF SORROW, DÄMMERFARBEN, EXHORDER, TRIBE OF PAZUZU, TURMION KÄTILÖT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Feb 222020
 

 

I’m about to drive to Portland with friends to take in a mainly acoustic show by Austin Lunn (Panopticon), Aerial Ruin, and Mike Scheidt of Yob. That means I probably won’t have a SHADES OF BLACK column on Sunday, though I’ve already written a premiere for that day, so we won’t leave you completely lonesome tomorrow. As for today, I’ve resorted to the “Overflowing Streams” format because there are SO MANY new songs and videos I’ve been enjoying that I didn’t want to cut the list back, and don’t have time to write about them.

Almost everything here surfaced over the last 48 hours. Perhaps needless to say, there’s a lot of variety on offer. I don’t expect anyone (but me) to get a kick out of all this, but hopefully you’ll find at least one or two things to like. Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: CHILDREN OF BODOM, SWALLOW THE SUN, WOLFHEART, SUMMONER’S CIRCLE — LIVE IN ATLANTA, APRIL 11, 2019

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 182019
 

 

(On April 11th our Atlanta-based contributor Tør returned to The Masquerade venue to take in Finnish-heavy performances by Children of Bodom, Swallow the Sun, Wolfheart, and local openers Summoner’s Circle. He sent us this report, along with a large batch of his own excellent photos from the show, most of which appear after the review.)

The traffic makes me want to ditch my car in the middle of I-75 and move to Europe. I get to The Masquerade customarily late but manage to catch a bit of the openers, Summoner’s Circle.

On their Facebook page the Knoxville outfit describe themselves as “a six-piece theatrical metal band that blends elements of doom, death, black and progressive metal into what they refer to as simply Epic Metal”. While genre-blending is not my cup of tea, I am pleasantly surprised by the solid display on stage. These guys are serious about what they do and the costumes and imagery match the grandiose sound they produce. Check out their first full-length, Tome, if you haven’t already done so. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 20): WOLFHEART AND SARASVATI

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018  2 Responses »
Feb 042019
 

 

This is another instance in which I consciously paired songs for this list because I thought they sounded good together. In fact, the second one helped me decide on the track I chose from the first band’s album (a choice that had become an intractable mental struggle).

To check out the previous installments of this still-expanding list, you’ll find them behind this link, and to learn what this series is all about, go here.

WOLFHEART

This really was a tough call for me. After listening to Wolfheart’s latest album, Constellation of the Black Light, I had no doubt that something from it would be on this list, I just didn’t know which track it would be.  The album came hot on the heels of 2017’s Tyhjyys, but as DGR noted in his review, it nevertheless continued the band’s impressive level of consistent quality, delivering a blend of fast-paced, explosive hammering and brooding, wintry melody with an often epic atmosphere. Continue reading »

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