UMUR
"My Enemies Look And Sound Like Me" is the fourth full-length studio album by Australian death metal/deathgrind act Werewolves. The album was released through Prosthetic Records in August 2023. It´s the successor to "From the Cave to the Grave" from June 2022. No lineup changes have taken place since the last album, or indeed since Werewolves formed in 2019, so the band still consists of the trio of drummer David Haley, guitarist Matt Wilcock, and lead vocalist/bassist Sam Bean.
Four albums in four years is quite unusual these days, but apparently Werewolves have opted for the old school approach of releasing new material every year. The only issue with that is that all their albums pretty much sound the same. The same death metal/deathgrind playing style, the same type of brutal, detailed, but also sterile sounding production values, and compositions which don´t stand out on the individual albums. You could take any song from this album and place it on one of the preceding releases and no one would notice.
So basically the material on "My Enemies Look And Sound Like Me" is more of the same. If you enjoyed the previous releases, you´re very likely to enjoy this album too, but if you´re like me and haven´t really been won over by Werewolves rather pedestrian take on the death metal/deathgrind genre, this album won´t change a thing for you.
As said it´s all decently composed, well performed, and professionally produced, but I miss gritt and some darkness to the whole thing. An example of the rather flat feeling I get when listening to this album, is the vocals. They are pretty standard death metal growling, and they arguably get the job done, but after one or two songs it becomes apparent that they are one-dimensional and delivered without much emotion or variation. It´s just the same song after song after song. They somewhat remind me of the Swedes in Coldworker, who also features a well known drummer from another band (in that case Nasum, in the case of Werewolves it´s Psycroptic).
So upon conclusion "My Enemies Look And Sound Like Me" is another decent quality death metal/deathgrind album from Werewolves that on the surface looks and sounds pretty good, but if you dig a little deeper lacks most of the things which make an album in this genre great. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.