The Wolves Of Avalon: Across Corpses Grey

Epic strangeness from a green and pleasant land

The Wolves Of Avalon album

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There’s madness in the Home Counties and here we hear its lupine howl. Two years on from the laudably bewildering Boudicca’s Last Stand, The Wolves Of Avalon have condensed their skewed but fascinating vision of the ancient past into a more succinct format.

Across Corpses Grey hinges almost entirely on its 30-minute centrepiece, wherein tales of ‘sodden fields, blood red mires and fallen kings’ during the War Of The Roses are set to some epic pagan metal.

The melodies are refined and insistent, the delivery raw but subtly theatrical, the latter trait defined via the wonderfully English narration by Metatron, of Godreah stablemates The Meads Of Asphodel.

It’s all barking mad, but The Wolves retain a stately muscularity throughout, delivering a welcoming walk through the carnage.

Dom Lawson
Writer

Dom Lawson began his inauspicious career as a music journalist in 1999. He wrote for Kerrang! for seven years, before moving to Metal Hammer and Prog Magazine in 2007. His primary interests are heavy metal, progressive rock, coffee, snooker and despair. He is politically homeless and has an excellent beard.