Wolves of the North

I remember hearing a couple of songs by Wan a while back, but didn’t find it very interesting and hence didn’t bother to look them up. But here I sit with their debut album, ready to be reviewed, and is thereby forced to really give them a good listen. Having done so I’ve come to two conclusions; this is both good and bad.

The good part being the fact that they’ve taken the early Bathory, Mayhem, Hellhammer sound, with all of its crudeness, and managed to slickly pay tribute to their heritage. But let’s first dwell a little in the bad part of the album. The production is extremely thin, which on one hand fits perfectly with their agenda, but also makes it lose power. The guitar sounds utterly weak, the bass is most of the time lost and the drum machine sounds as rigid and programmed as it possibly could. The drum issue can be overlooked during the slower songs, like for instance Wargoat (which is one hell of a tune), but is so in your face it’s deterring during the fast tracks. Where 13 sons of the devil would be a pretty damn cool, relentless old school song I just can’t help but find the drum sound bloody annoying. They’ve got a session drummer for gigs, so why not utilize him for recording, it just doesn’t make any sense to me.

But as I said the album definitely has its moments. While the riffing’s pretty simple and back to the basics, it also kicks ass a lot of the time, skillfully rehashing the sound of the golden days of black metal, be it thrashy or punkish. The vocals have that typical old school feel as well, where their entire concept comes across as a bunch of young guys who just started a band to homage their own favourite bands. While most of the stuff is simply put rather cool, they occasionally whip up something out of the ordinary, like for instance the previously mentioned Wargoat. With its five minutes it’s the longest track (the shortest one, Rapid Satan, being just fifty seconds long), and also one of the slowest ones. What makes this tune such a killer is the incredibly haunting atmosphere they manage to create just by the slick use of the bass, a few guitar churns and a husky voice lurking in the background. Like I said; both good and bad, where the butt-ugly logo and horrible cover art falls under the latter alternative.

Originally written for http://www.mylastchapter.net