WOLFPAKK – Wolves Reign

7.5/10

WOLFPAKK - Wolves Reign - 7.5/10

7.5/10

Summary

AFM Records
Release date: May 5, 2017

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Collaborative albums are always an adventure, especially in Metal where one musician’s or vocalist’s style can be so immediately recognizable and dominant that it can pull the listener out of the context of the album (think Probot). On the other end of the spectrum, there are the collaborations that can feature a panoply of guest stars that somehow blend together into a unified whole such as on the fourth Wolfpakk project Wolves Reign. Mark Sweeney and Michael Voss have done another commendable job in bringing together top shelf Metal masters to make an enjoyable record where the individual styles are recognizable but don’t take listeners out of the core concept of, well, wolf songs.

There are twenty-three “guest wolves” on the project; part of the fun in listening is identifying who plays and sings on which song. The songwriting and arrangements are tight, and the vocal performances uniformly excellent, but perhaps the most thrilling parts of Wolves Reign are in the guitar solos. For the most part they appear in fairly traditional fashion, after the second to last chorus in the back third of the songs, but sometimes throwing it down old school provides the best form of education. Partly, it is this adherence to tradition that makes Wolves Reign so fun to listen to, as it is both an exploration of familiar forms, but by using new combinations to create them.

TUNE INTO METALEXPRESSRADIO.COM at NOON & MIDNIGHT (EST) / 6:00 & 18:00 (CET) TO HEAR THE BEST TRACKS FROM THIS UPCOMING RELEASE!!!

Wolfpakk

Author

Daniel Waters

Daniel was a reviewer here at Metal Express Radio. Iron Maiden’s Piece Of Mind wasn’t the first Metal album he owned, but it was the one that lifted the lid off his soul when he received the record as a gift on his 15th birthday. He's been a Metal fan ever since. He's probably best known as the author of various Young Adult novels such as the Generation Dead series and the ghost story Break My Heart 1,000 Times, now also a major motion picture entitled I Still See You, starring Bella Thorne. Writing and music, especially Heavy Metal music, has always been inextricably linked in his mind and career. His first paid gig doing any type of writing was for Cemetery Dance, where he wrote a horror-themed music column called Dead Beats, and when he was writing the first Generation Dead novel he had a ritual where he started his writing day with a Metal playlist that kicked off with “Crushing Belial” by Shadows Fall.
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