WOLFHEAD - Wolfhead CD (digipak)

You’d think that a band born in 2008 after some drunk rehearsals in between black/death outfit BETWEEN THE FROST guitarist Iosue and guitar-wizard-cum-producer and leader of old-school death-metal warlords GRAVEYARD would only mean buzzsaw guitars, grinding drums and putrid production wouldn’t you? Except that WOLFHEAD won’t let be pigeonholed that easily and Javi himself step furiously on any possible categorisation: “It lies somewhere rock n’roll, heavy-metal, stoner, doom, grunge, black-metal, whatever! A song sounds like BATHORY but then moves on to TROUBLE territories, then towards MOTÖRHEAD highway before taking a left-turn somewhere in between old ENSLAVED and DARKTHRONE… IN a way, it’s the exact opposite of GRAVEYARD that stands for a very specific sound. For WOLFHEAD, whatever sounds cool to our ears will make it, let it be keyboards, harmonized vocals, strange instrument or even harmonica!” Confused? You betcha. And don’t you forget some ALICE IN CHAINS, BLACK SABBATH or SOLITUDE AETERNUS thrown in the bin for good measure… Recorded in Barcelona in Javi’s own Moontower studios in between October 2008 and December 2009, such a mix bag could easily have been a recipe for disaster without the proper vocalist to pull it off. Enter Ivan, the already legendary frontman of the sadly defunct GREAT COVEN, whose legacy is now being carried by WARCHETYPE: he might be the only guy in this galaxy capable to have one foot in Birmingham circa 1970 and the other one in Valhalla along Thor the god of thunder, as exampled on the eight minutes plus epic, “Sons Of Asgard”. Or pull off such a relaxed and yet fitting performance for the band’s surprising entirely acoustic rendition of PINK FLOYD’s ode to their fallen brother Syd Barrett, “Wish You Were Here”. Adorned with a superb Andrei Bouzikov (MUNICIPAL WASTE, CANNABIS CORPSE etc.) cover art, WOLFHEAD self-titled debut simply ranks next to HORN OF THE RHINO and DOOMDOGS among DOOMENTIA’s finest stoner/metal hybrid…