Power metal. The subgenre’s greatest bands bewitch listeners with sonic tapestries of battles, bravery and biceps. It’s life-affirming magick, more than just the soundtrack to noodle-armed youths pwning n00bs on Fortnite. This music thrives on oomph. It needs, in the words of soul icon Seal, fuckin’ wolves. Enter Powerwolf, an act for whom the word ‘subtlety’ is an affront. Across two decades and nine albums, the German five-piece have become the world’s leaders in clerical, obnoxiously horny, werewolf-themed power metal. We’re told it’s a crowded market.
Have they gone prog on their 10th album? Dropped a collab with Drake? Nah. They’ve done the Powerwolf thing, again. Swimming in the Sabaton/Manowar moat rather than their Maiden/Priest paddle-pool of yore, Bless ’Em With The Blade rips Wake Up The Wicked open by reducing Deicide’s career to one line: ‘Tear up the Bible!’ It’s bubonically catchy heavy metal built for outdoor stages, choirs squeezing through honking organs, tearaway leads and frontman Attila Dorn’s überhensch operatics.
And that’s where Powerwolf claw the competition apart. Attila is classically trained, boasting the vocal range and control to do musical theatre. He just prefers dressing as a clergyman while detailing copulation by moonlight. Whether he’s barking Latin over Sinners Of The Seven Seas’ Boney M. beat or harping on about a cannibal in 1589, he’s the glue, the sugar-rush, the spark that makes this band dynamite, sanctified or otherwise.
Onlookers will declare it silly bollocks all the same, but Wake Up The Wicked could elicit more thumbs-down/poo emojis from Powerwolf purists. The delivery often goes so Sabaton you can hear the World Of Tanks sponsorship rolling up – the song about Joan of Arc is literally called Joan Of Arc, starting with the same layered vocals and major-key stomp as their camo-clad Swedish contemporaries. It’s far from the taut, wiry brand of libidinous lycanthropy they carved their reputation from way back... but does it matter when every chorus hits like Jeremy Clarkson starved of hot food and attention?
Aficionados might snaffle up a few extra scraps, but at this juncture the band are the Hatebreed of their field; you’re not getting many surprises. Sure, there’s a jump-scare children’s choir on We Don’t Wanna Be No Saints, but that’s pretty much it. Ratings-wise, the album slips between the band’s two highlights from the past decade, Blessed & Possessed and Call Of The Wild. Even with the subdued – by Powerwolf standards – closer Vargamor, there’s zero fat. It’s blockbuster tunes, each of them screaming money, geared to make you smile and sing aloud.
Power metal is daft, but Powerwolf know. Look at Wake Up The Wicked’s cover. That thing doesn’t vibe Spiritbox. That vibes a band who headlined a German festival last year flanked by an augmented-reality wolf, all while singing about an erection so hard it woke the dead. Is this any sillier than Rob Halford’s assless chaps, Bruce Dickinson’s aviator get-up or Sleep Token’s Spirited Away cosplay? Not really. This is Sabaton for shaggers – join the pack. Woof.
Wake Up The Wicked is out this Friday, July 26
