Warthur
The debut album by Powerwolf finds the gang staking out their territory. Over the years they've taken a lot of inspiration from a range of styles - black metal corpsepaint and lyrical focuses (largely based around a band mythology around Satanic werewolves subverting Catholic imagery), and gothic and symphonic flourishes around the fringes of their sound. But whereas their centre of gravity over time has moved into the realm of power metal, this debut sees them demonstrate a solid grasp of the fundamentals of straight-ahead heavy metal. Perhaps some of their later capacity for genre-blending arises in part from a thorough understanding on the common ground between the different metal traditions they weave together - as it stands, the album is solidly entertaining, albeit nothing metal fans won't have heard a lot of before.