Vehemency
It hasn’t been but a few weeks when I reviewed Earthride’s Something Wicked, and here’s another stoner / doom metal outfit and their fresh album, again released through Doomentia Records. While Earthride focused on muddy and groovy tones, Wolfhead breathes more, giving more room for longer compositions in which a lot of different influences get mixed together.
First and foremost, Wolfhead is old school to the bone, and it doesn’t necessarily take anything else than to hear the scruffy and rather lo-fi production of the album to realize this. And when I say that different influences flourish here, I do not lie: while the basis of the music retains in Black Sabbath esque doom metal, ”Cul de Sac” is a straightforward Motörhead track and the massive 8-minute ”Sons of Asgard” reeks of latter era Bathory. Not to forget a slight taste of Darkthroneish black metal on the album as well, nor the bookend "Wish You Were Here", a loyal Pink Floyd cover sounding very close to the original. After hearing the whole album, these sentences in the promo text make sense: ”...it’s the exact opposite of Graveyard that stands for a specific sound. For Wolfhead, whatever sounds cool to our ears will make it, let it be keyboards, harmonized vocals, strange instruments or even harmonica!”
Wolfhead sounds nocturnal all the way through, mostly thanks to the deep dark ritualistic trances of ”Journey by the Shaman's Hand” and the self-titled track, not to underestimate the importance of the cover art either. This combined to the well done material and a good sound production makes Wolfhead another successful Doomentia release, and this one is undoubtedly going to receive spins from me along with the other new album from the very same label. Old school doom metal and stoner fans, make sure not to miss this one.