ALBUM REVIEW: Blood & Iron – Wolftooth
WOLFTOOTH specialise in upbeat and triumphant brand of heavy metal soaked in groove-laden doom and stoner rock. With their latest album, Blood & Iron, they have made their boldest record to date. The four-piece have grown a lot as a band since their 2018 self-titled debut, which served as a fine introduction to the band with its heavy doom and stoner influences on top of a more traditional heavy metal style. Those doom and stoner influences obviously remained on last year’s follow-up Valhalla, but that record saw the band take on the trad metal style a lot more with fantastic results. With Blood & Iron, they kick it up another notch, and while all that you love about the band remains, the songs have got even more epic and ambitious and the results are astounding and a joy to listen to.
The album’s formidable opener Ahab is one hell of a way to kick things off – a riff filled epic that immediately conjures up a nautical adventure as the title suggests and one that starts the journey of Blood & Iron the right way. From then on in, the album continues in the same vein but filled with many varied elements throughout. The hypnotic Hellespont, the anthemic title track and the punchy A Kings Land follow and all are packed full of passion and hearthstone when it comes to riffs, grooves and soaring vocals.
The berserk Broken Sword changes the pace and dials up the energy with its ferocious and galloping riffs, before the catchy The Voyage ignites proceedings with its incendiary nature and its amazing guitar solos. The powerfully melodic Winter White, with its mid-paced groove, comes across as WOLFTOOTH‘s own Snowblind and has the same feeling as the BLACK SABBATH classic. It acts as the perfect predecessor to Garden Of Hersperides, a track which is a full on maelstrom of riffs upon riffs and Chris Sullivan’s awesome vocals, and which shows how good the band are at crafting memorable and classic sounding metal songs.
The Mare concludes the album in the best riff-laden fashion and makes sure that things go off with a bang. It finishes Blood & Iron off perfectly with its upbeat mixture of melody and heaviness, and its head banging finale provides the icing on a particularly riff-filled cake
Blood & Iron is an album packed full of killer riffs, soaring vocals, and rolling grooves, and there is so much of all these to explore every time you listen. Above all, it features well crafted and memorable songs which demonstrate exactly that WOLFTOOTH are carrying on their early promise of becoming a much loved and revered metal band. Putting albums out like Blood & Iron will only cement this. Put this album on, turn it up loud and marvel at the greatness of WOLFTOOTH in their doomy stoner metal glory!
Rating: 8/10
Blood & Iron is set for release on December 3rd via Napalm Records.
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