ALBUM REVIEW: Life Knife Death – Wolfbrigade
Every plateful of something to get angry about dished up by the world proves that punk remains perennial. Hell, the heaving lungfuls of additives to what’s been served up to the large majority of humankind should be enough to turn the stomach of anyone paying attention. To that end, thankfully, WOLFBRIGADE have been professionally angry for the better part of three decades now. Hardcore legends and d-beat connoisseurs, the band have yet to relent on their wrecking crew crusade to eliminate apathy from the masses.
Their eleventh outing, Life Knife Death, finds WOLFBRIGADE in new territory in at least an administrative sense. The news of their switch to Metal Blade Records might not have raised many eyebrows, but the transition to a label of such heavy significance is still completely seamless. The band remain a towering monument to an almost swaggering brutality; death metal elements adorning the already bloody hardcore jacket are tokens of successful rampages in years’ past on proud display. Be that through the sheer audio thuggery of Ways To Die or the anatomy-altering bombast of Unruled And Unnamed, there is heaviness here that will punch holes through even the most vinegar-soaked critics.
Speaking of familiar features, there’s still plenty of WOLFBRIGADE’s playfulness at the wheel when it comes to broadening out from their more typical influences. The vein of melodic craftiness beneath the solid surface is tapped often; the title track’s tendency to wander into a frankly delicious groove is a testament to that dedication to mixing things up (the jury is still out on if it’s a punny play on words of Live, Laugh, Love or not). Then the more experimental volleys ring out. Your God Is A Corpse is melodeath in everything but vocals, with the strangely catchy Skinchanger thudding along to its pseudo-relaxed beat alongside it. Even the genuinely odd instrumental qualities of The Age Of Fuckery work to create a balance to proceedings, keeping things fresh without sacrificing any of those core hardcore tenets.
Keeping a hold on things that have come before isn’t always without fault. While sound tends to be a deal breaker for a lot of people when it comes to hardcore, the genre isn’t the problem here. Previous effort Run With The Hunted had frankly terrible mixing at times, the properly crunchy, distorted sound replaced with a feeling like you’re listening with your ear up to the wall from the next room. Boasting slick production or being able to tell the notes apart on the low range is hardly the crustpunk ethos, but there’s a world of difference between a wall of sound and audio soup. While Life Knife Death feels a lot more dynamic in the second half, the muddy guitars in the first few tracks spoil the knuckle-first impact somewhat.
Even with the sound issues in mind, Life Knife Death proves how hard it is to look past how accomplished WOLFBRIGADE still are at this point in their career and just how hard this effort goes in the name of righteous anger. It boils over with the sort of fury that needs to be channelled directly into ears, proving if nothing else that the band are still fully dialled in and ready at a moment’s notice. If punk is perennial, WOLFBRIGADE continue to be fertile soil to breed new shoots on this evidence.
Rating: 8/10
Life Knife Death is set for release on September 13th via Metal Blade Records.
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