Reviews: Powerwolf, Then Comes The Night, Asenblut, Blacklist (Reviews By Matt Bladen, Zak Skane, James Jackson & Mark Young)

Powerwolf - Wake Up The Wicked (Napalm Records) [Matt Bladen]

Everyone's favourite Lycan Lovers, Powerwolf return with their new album Wake Up The Wicked, following up their 2021 record Call Of The Wild they are once again here to bring sexy back to power metal, having added new wrinkles to their approach with every release and honing a live show like no other and on Wake Up The Wicked the 10th album in their 20 year career they cast their spell over the listener with some cinematic, baroque, sinful power metal inspired by tales from the 16th Century, including witchcraft, werewolves and W.A.P (ask a young person). 

Joost Van Den Broek's production is epic, the orchestrations on Kyrie Klitorem and Viva Vulgata are colossal, while Heretic Hunters gallops with the lustful conviction of Matthew Hopkins. What I've noticed is that Attila Don's vocals are the most varied they have been in a long time, almost theatrical on Wake Up The Wicked as Charles and Matthew Greywolf get a chance to play some classic power metal on Joan Of Arc as Thunderpriest rampages with Roel van Helden taking the double kicks as We Don't Wanna No Saints sums up the whole Powerwolf ethos Falk Maria Schlegel's organs working their way through all of the tracks as Vargamor has as much Lupine mentions as Sonata Arctica. 

Wake Up The Wicked doesn't move too far from Powerwolf's core sound, but it's more anthems for them to play on stage where they are superstars. 8/10

Then Comes The Night – Start The Change (Metalapolis Records) [Zak Skane]

Hailing from southern Germany Then Comes The Night brings us a heavy and power metal approach spiced up with some classic Rock and Roll. Since 2019 the band has released 2….well technically 3 albums, their debut album Chapter 1 in 2022 which sealed their stamp on the local scene by featuring collaborations from Ralf Scheepers from Primal Fear, Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens from KK’s Priest and Tim Kanoa Hansen from Induction. Their second release in 2023 Start The Change….yes I know this the same album that is being reviewed but when this album was first released a year ago independently the band was proposed by Metalapolis Records to re-release the album on worldwide distribution by SPV.

So if you haven’t heard the album before it’s opens up on a major note with the title track Start The Change beginning with an innocent xylophone melody before we get some Marty Freedman J-rock styled major keyed twin guitar harmonies which are then followed by some classic power metal styled pedal note riffage along with some vitro styled guitar solos. The vocals have a more raw production to them, meaning that I can’t hear much reverb or delay complementing the tracks, but I got to respect that there is no signs of auto-tune on these vocal takes. 

Because in some of the high notes you can hear the vocalist sound quite strained in some section on this track. But this concern is rectified in the second track Roar Out Your Anger because the arrangements are tuned to a lower key to help with vocalist to explore the gravely lows to piercing highs with flawless ease. With the lower tunings, the guitars sound more thick, which allows great a marriage with the double kick grooves to create this great Judas Priest sounding effort. The mid crushing tempos of The Gypsy Curse opens up with some oriental inspired strings before we get pounded down with some slow elephant weighted drum grooves, whilst low dark sounding guitars hum evil tunes along with raspy vocals and baritone pitched backing vocals. 

Princess Of The Heart brings in some good ol’ sing along's, up beat riffage and story telling lyrics. To close the first half of the album the band brings us a cover of Letter X’s Leather On Leather by giving it an update by doing away with the 80/90 sounding synths and pushing the guitars more in the front of the mix, whilst replacing the retro reverb drums with a fat sounding production and raspy vocals. To open up the second part of the album we got some classic rock god levels of attitude with the opening drum solo in Badass D that would make Cosy Powell proud. 

This track brings in the golden era of rock sound with some classic glam metal riffage and a solo to match. Other high lights on this album is the piano driven track In My Mind which pulls the guitars right down and every drum hit becomes more ginger and articulate to help the vocals become more front and centre. 

The closing track shows the band throwing everything into the mix from a classic up beat classical orchestral score that would make Andrew Lloyd Webber shed a tear whilst being followed by the major key riffage that has come back from the opening track to conclude the bands sonic journey. Not only are we re-greeted with the major riffs attack, the band finish on heavenly note as the track fades out by baritone choired harmonies that the accompanies the vocalists last echoing verses. Even though the bands members have lessened in size this has not stopped them from sounding larger than. 

For fans of Judas Priest, Van Halen and Motley Crue. 7/10

Asenblut - Entfesselt (Massacre Records) [James Jackson]

Viking Death Metal from Germany according to the bio that comes with this year’s release of Asenblut’s fifth full length album, Entfesselt; building upon a discography that began with 2009’s Aufbruch. Viking based ? Hard to tell to be perfectly honest as lyrically it’s sung in German and at times performed in a more black metal style vocalisation, which would make the most English of phrases indecipherable. There are, according to the bio - again; references to Lovecraftian Gods, man’s accomplishment and triumphs over land sea and air, gladiators, witchcraft and the obvious, Vikings. 

Though all of these references are lost within the language barrier, the emphasis upon which they’re sung is not at all in question. As for that death metal, it’s hard to actually pigeonhole this one, for at times there’s a lot of groove to it rather than anything flat out death metal and the aforementioned Dagon has an intriguing addition of an orchestral bridge, Wolfe des Meeres has quite a catchy melodic interlude and solo work blending into a very black metal finale. 

I have quite the love/hate relationship with death metal, developed over years of discovering genres that offer the same intensity without the monotonous elements that I attribute and hear from so many bands of the genre, Asenblut have taken that formula and added a bit of depth and substance to it, offering a blend of techniques that keep the listener interested. 7/10

Blacklist - With Murderous Intent (Self Released) [Mark Young]

And to round off my week, here’s Blacklist with their second full length album! With Murderous Intent they push themselves further again, keeping all of the nasty, snarling super-speed riffs whilst using some of the most celebrated celluloid monsters as a source. Indeed, there is a certain feel that in order to move forward they have looked to the past for their own key influences and have simply ran with it.

 
Cannibal leads us on that merry dance that takes no time at all in establishing what we can expect here – riffs a plenty, high-speed drums and gang vocals. Fans of classic thrash will be at home here as there are so many throwbacks it could almost be classed as comfort food for the ears. Tyler mixing up the vocal attack adds a lot to this and where would we be without whammy bar abuse?

Blood Baptism has that fist in the air groove to it, once again it has those class thrash motifs running through it and I’ll be honest now you will have heard this before, but it doesn’t detract from the energy they put into it. So far, so good. Where they really get interesting is on The Shape. An excerpt of Donald Pleasance’s Doctor Loomis (or a very accurate sound-alike) intoning when he first met Michael Myers ushers in a frantic tale devoted to Halloween's unkillable villain. 

Writing about this gives seems to lift this material higher than the opening 1-2 and feels fuller in its sound. What they don’t do is suffer any drop in the intensity. Even in the slower, melodic sections where there is some guitar fireworks on display its still moving which is all you want. Possessing of a frankly mental lead break, its top stuff backed with some of ‘those’ chord choices that really makes it stand out. 

Nostromo does the same trick, again introduced by Ash, the treacherous android from Alien. It manages to condense the film into 4 minutes replete with a cracking chorus that should be blinding live. If anything, it’s a little too similar to The Shape, but you can forgive them for selecting two classic films to write about. It has given them full reign to just go for it on them both.

Getting back to earth, Kill The Coroner is next and occupies that mid-tempo range with some chugging riffs that sit in the lower end of the neck. That they manage to wring so much out of that riff pattern says a lot about how they put their songs together. 

The Dismemberment Blade is the short sharp stab of the album and is rapid, with Matt Longshaw playing out of his skin behind the kit on this one. They manage to cram in some tasty lead breaks too, but that verse riff is just royal (Is it from Texas Chainsaw?). 

Keeping the guess the horror film going, Naturom Demonto starts with everyone’s favourite large chinned B movie star asking a ‘lady’ to leave his store (Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart) and we are straight into a song about possession, Evil Dead style. It’s fun and if it’s in tribute to Evil Dead then its bonus points from me. That sense of fun is running through it, I know it’s not serious topic, but this is exactly the sort of thing I want – good time metal to distract from all of the real evil in the world. Again, it brings us more of that heads down riffology that naturally makes you nod your head.

 
And the references keep getting better as on Lethal Infection they take us to far-off lands where a pesky Sumatran Rat-Monkey causes mayhem and a plague of Zombies courtesy of Peter Jackson prior to him becoming a serious director. There is some storming down-picking going on as well as triplets which is just fantastic. The way they deploy the differing vocal attacks go a long way here too, not lingering with one style for too long and of course they give us some more face-melting guitar work which has been a constant all the way through the album.

 
They close out with Never Sleep Again, combining two melodic lines in its opening bars before they drop the hammer. It’s as strong as anything on here, going between the fast and mid-tempo ranges to great effect. The guitars here are razor sharp, each playing for the other as they drop heavy riff after heavy riff. It is a great ending track and it’s an album they should be proud of.

 
I’ll let you guess the film…

I mentioned earlier that if you are a lover of thrash from its golden era then a lot of ideas on here, or at least the execution will be familiar to you. In the same breath, if you are a lover of thrash then you will love this. Its that simple. The opening tracks were decent to start with but as soon as The Shape kicked in it was like a different animal. 

There is some exceptional solo work on here (Messrs Larkin and McLoughlin) that stay on that right side of mental and it would be remiss of me not to mention Curtis on bass, responsible for keeping those two In check. I can’t give this enough praise, so I’ll stop and give it an 8/10

Ps – If I have got any film references wrong, so what.