(DGR‘s been killing some brain cells with Werewolves again, whose new album is out July 12)

I’ve discussed this before, and our cohort Andy has also brought this up a few times, but the idea of listening to hundreds upon hundreds of albums a year – as if the larger the number the more impressive it is as a metric of how clever and cultured you are – has always bit at my side a little bit.

Of course, it’s worth noting that I am a fool with bad management skills, so it is therefore feasible that you could actually have listened to 3-4 times as many albums as there are days in the year – and in my younger days I too, would’ve bragged the same.

But focussing on the numbers makes things kind of ephemeral and disposable doesn’t it? As if all music were just a fleeting experiences designed only for your immediate satisfaction and nothing else.

Surely, the artist who has strived for months over songs, figuring out transitions, how to layer and arrange things, chased tones for hours, before finally settling on the specific composition being played before you deserves more than to be added as just one more point on an infinitely increasing bar on a graph?

Early in my writing I used to be proud of the fact that I was on time (or early) with many albums. But nowadays that’s less the case, as I like to deep dive into things and absorb the release for everything it has to offer.

I still do land the occasional early or on-time review but much like a baseball player slowly coming off of ‘roids, those stats are cratering and cratering hard. Everything instead finds room when the olde’ brain machine manages to turn enough cogent thought into something to discuss with you, the reader, when it comes to a new album. I care more about the discussion and experience of a release than I do the timeliness of it.

Which brings us to Die For Us… where absolutely none of this bullshit applies.

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Photographer credit: Rob Brens

(We continue our week-long series of reviews wherein DGR is doing a lot of catching up, and today he tackles not one but two 2022 releases by the same band, the Australian extremists in Werewolves.)

I get the sneaking suspicion that Werewolves‘ style of music works fantastically well for each person one time and after that it’s a little bit more give and take. Your first album with them is the revelation of how gloriously stupid and how intentionally so the Werewolves‘ brand of music is, and then once that becomes the high mark, everything is a little bit more even-keeled in spite how teeth-gnashing and vicious things may appear from there out.

For me, it was the group’s 2021 album What A Time To Be Alive, which was basically an album of deathgrind front-to-back with almost no chance to breathe. It was an album that basically felt ‘needed’ when it landed with, even if the overall approach was one-note as all hell.

Werewolves have achieved a rapid clip in terms of releasing music as well, essentially going year-over-year since the release of their debut album The Dead Are Screaming. 2022 alone has brought us the release of their latest album From The Cave To The Grave as well as a four-song EP simply called Deathmetal. We’re late to the bus on both, so this rumination needed to cover both releases, but that sure as hell isn’t going to stop us now. Continue reading »