Studded leather hats off to Niklas Stålvind for keeping Swedish true metal squad Wolf on an upward trajectory from their earliest jams in the mid-90s, when playing mid-80s-style metal with gleeful abandon was widely chided as juvenile.
He’s the only member left from those formative years, but seventh album Devil Seed proves his perseverance well-founded. Although occasionally Wolf over-plough their furrow with unexceptional results, Devil Seed is a far more varied and rounded, and rather darker, album than usual, with a faint experimental streak – see the quirky Spanish guitar solo in Skeleton Woman or the ethereal Eastern moods of The Dark Passenger. Once again the production sparkles and the instrumentation is incisive but never indulgent, with Shark Attack, My Demon and Killing Floor boasting simple, surging choruses that’ll have you screaming along.
Via Century Media
