WOLFBRIGADE - "DAMNED" (Sverige Crustcore heavyweight champions back in 2012; CD-Release via "SOUTHERN LORD")

WOLFBRIGADE - "DAMNED"
("Southern Lord"; CD):

"THE SOUND OF THUNDER", so goes the intro shouting to this album, and it couldn't had been chosen any better, period. But one after another. They are back, the amazing silverbacks of metallic sinister brutal Crustcore, roaring down to us from the heights of Sverige. I discovered this band fifteen or more or something like this years ago, some time around 1996 or so, when they were known and around as WOLFPACK and released their brilliant masterpiece full length debut album "A NEW DAWN FADES". And with their great combination out of brutal and aggressive, yet very melancholic-depressive and very melodic and atmospheric Crustcore mixed with tight, heavy, harsh, yet catchy, melodic and overall damn intense Old School Sunlight Sverige Death Metal they got me promptly. It was exactly what I was looking for, or something like this you can surely say it. All done with some sort of a very few music-wise connections to what the almighty THE EXPLOITED used to do back then when they released their absolute masterpiece album "BEAT THE BASTARDS", which means a cultivated blending of Punk, Hardcore and Metal, but WOLFPACK took it much further and had always been a Crust not a Punk or a Metal band and also by far more atmospheric, and they were also always and right from the start one hell of a unique band. Never heard such stuff before and it directly hit me like a sledgehammer straight in my face. Really a statement of an album, still today if not even more than yesterday respectively back in the days. From then on I was hooked up, and when the almighty "LYCANTHRO PUNK" was released I found something like my holy grail. Even more intense and brutal, sinister and aggressive, yet atmospheric, meldoic and catchy and one hell of an outstanding groundbreaking album. A real larger than life album, period!!! The next one of them for me was their classic "ALLDAY HELL", more brutal and by far more Crust than ever before, also with a back then new singer on the microphone. Back then in the booklet of this album they also announced that they would be from then on being playing under a new name, the one of WOLFBRIGADE. So, like you all can see, I love this band and loved this guys right directly from the start for me with them. But despise their greatness and what they always meant to me WOLFPACK (today WOLFBRIGADE) had anyhow always been a band that I only managed to follow loosely back in the days. And when they were renamed to WOLFBRIGADE I somehow lost them totally out of sight, don't ask me why. Maybe it was not at least caused or at least benefitted strongly by the long decade that past in or over or during which I nearly listened to no (new) Crustcore at all (why ever), or what ever, I don't know it, I can't say it, I just know and I just can say that this is the very first WOLFBRIGADE album I've ever listened to and that I call my own. This turned out to be a terrible mistake, that I lost them so drastically out of sight. Hm, but as if I didn't know it already anyway before... So, yes, saw it, remembered them and what they meant to me, decided, grabbed it, bought it... was totally blewn away from it right from the start, awesome, period!!! After my only and last experiences had been with them in their WOLFPACK days with their three albums "A NEW DAWN FADES", "LYCANTHRO PUNK", and "ALLDAY HELL", I have to admit that I can only draw lines back to this masterpiece groundbreakers of albums. But be sure that I will try everything to make clear that this album stands by and for its very one, totally, and that I will try my best to make this clear and work this out as good as anyhow possible. With drawing lines back to the mentioned albums then I can say that this very new one blends perfectly "A NEW DAWN FADES" with the "ALLDAY HELL" and cultivates it all with some intense atmosphere and sheer intensity like on "LYCANTHRO PUNK". That means that it melts together perfectly intense and furious raging brutal Crustcore with great aggressive yet pretty melodic Sverige Death Metal and cultivates it all with a tight morbid, melancholic, sinister, yet forceful atmosphere, and all done for at least one hundred percent unique and totally stand alone, like the shining and true original they simply are. Ah, and just for the record, clearly that the Crustcore takes the lead, not the Death Metal. But don't get it wrong, because "DAMNED" is everything but a ripp off of the mentioned old albums, no, it's just that you can take the description based on a comparision as well as a connection between or combination of the three old masterpieces of them as a loose coordination system in which you can find "DAMNED", but the new one is totally fresh, new, alive-lively, and in a not trendy but all self-contained meant sense totally up to date. The songwriting is just great, totally intense and grapping and mercyless heavy forward pushing, interesting and just outstanding shining great, the songs are full of great suprises and amazing little big twists and turns that you wouldn't have expected in this intense inferno of sheer metallic Crustcore brutality, and while the pace of the songs is mostly a surely pure high speed raging one, it's yet also in the right places and at the right time a heavy groovin' more down paced mid tempo smashing bloody hammer aimed directly at your face to break it completly through. The music is marked to perfection and to the very peak of it by the amazing stand alone guitar work, that covers from brutal slashing riff assaults, no matter if in furious high speed or in brickwall style smashing groove style a total blast, to atmospheric tight intense sinister, dark, desperate and sharp guitar leads, totally a fucking shining and intense affair, and with great solos ending, really sticking to and in your head stuff, the guitar playing covers everything and this outstanding great, totally amazing, and is really in a fantastic way marking the songs heavily and strongly, and totally intense it is like fuck. Then there are the pretty guttural and throaty, deep and rough and tough and pretty pissed off and raw shouted, damn charismatic lead vocals, they really stick to your head and they drive the lyrics in their like a skrew, and this without mercy and without regrets. Next is the sawing and shredding and heavy buzzing and hard rumbling bass playing, really great. And all is backed up by the thundering forceful heavy brutal D-Beat styled yet pretty nicely varying drum work, it gives it all the tight and heavy, brutal and bulky, very beefy, yes, the stoic but yet also pretty diverse and by all means damn necessary backbone. Thumbs up through the roof for this all. The musicians are incredible total in command of their instruments and of what they are doing, and, like already mentioned above, their songwriting skills are even better. Better than this it won't be, point and fact. The lyrics are also great, cover a wide distance, from battle themed anthems to tributes to Charly Manson, the artwork is simple and pretty ''smal'' but still really great (and much darker than the scanned cover picture above may tells to you the way my scanner did it), and the powerful production sound makes it all damn round. Their new label seemed at first sight a little bit strange in the sense of untypical for their style of music, but who cares, "SOUTHERN LORD" is a great label and they did here a great job and so why should I care about my own wrong exceptions. This one is highly recommended by me to you, one of the very best albums of 2012 and it's so damn great that they are back and even more that WOLFBRIGADE are back on my radar finally, and I lazy bastards won't let them go out there again. Brilliant and amazing!!! And yes, this is really "THE SOUND OF THUNDER" and nothing less. Get it!!! (10 of 10 points)
(http://www.facebook.com/lycanthropunks)
(I think that also a LP version of this should be released, so keep your eyes open for it if you want your dose on vinyl.)