Wolfbrigade 'Life Knife Death' LP Dark Grey Marbled Vinyl

Wolfbrigade 'Life Knife Death' LP Dark Grey Marbled Vinyl Description

In a 2019 Bandcamp interview to promote Wolfbrigade's last LP 'The Enemy: Reality', bassist Johan Erkenvåg observed that "the political climate in the world these past few years has been the worst that we’ve ever experienced in our lifetimes". After half a decade of war, pestilence, catastrophe and terror, it's as if the world heard Johan's assertion and said, "hold my beer". Mounting global chaos may have us all darkly fearing the end times, but it has also seemingly created the ideal circumstances for a hardcore punk LP as coruscatingly brutal as Wolfbrigade's 'Life Knife Death'.

"Well yeah, who could’ve known! The five years that have passed since our last album has served as a pretty good backdrop for a new punk record or misanthropy in general," affirms the band, adding a wry reference for the Bill Hicks fans: "Mankind – a virus with shoes. As always, our lyrics are fueled by the ever growing disgust we feel about humanity. The everyday realization that we are a part of this fear-animalistic stupidity that drives the world further into oblivion. The inspiration just keeps raining down from the sky, killing the masses. Waking up to this every day makes us want to scream in horror."

Formed in 1995 in the small Swedish city of Mariestad by key players from Sweden's legendary hardcore scene, Wolfbrigade (known as Wolfpack until 1999) remain among Scandinavia's most respected, influential and reliable purveyors of real-world brute-force hullabaloo. On this eleventh album, the niftiest skills honed to a fine edge over 30 years are dispatched with greater style and intensity than ever. Most immediately, there's the sheer velocity and barely-controlled rage pumping through dynamic d-beaten blood-shakers like 'Ways To Die' and 'Your God Is A Corpse', the furious attack assisted to heart-fluttering greatness by a newly loosened sense of raucous spontaneity. "We didn’t really rehearse any of the songs on this album," the band reveals. "We tend to overwork and overanalyze everything that we do, and sometimes we get lost in that process. This time we wanted to go rough, to capture the raw essence of the song when it’s just out of the womb. All the blood and gore."

Wolfbrigade's penchant for focused self-reflection aided them most satisfyingly in the arrangement and sequencing of these twelve killer tunes: "As an overanalyzing band, we put a lot of effort into shaping the dynamics of an album. From combining the intros and outros, tempos and what key the songs are in. We are several songwriters in the band and we all listen to different music. So the material that is brought to the table has a great variety. Then the lycanthro machinery sputters to life."

The band's disparate influences are drawn together with unifying solidity - the remorseless rhythms of Discharge, the blue-collar rock'n'roll of Motörhead, the heads-down bludgeon of classic Entombed - even the Beatles get a look in, albeit in subverted form, with the splendid title 'A Day In The Life Of An Arse'. "I just thought of that song title, which is genius on its own, and 'Of An Arse' just popped into my head. Beatles churned through the Wolfbrigade mill, the horror of waking up to another day, playing your part in the never ending shitscene of mankind."

While it's likely that Wolfbrigade will be lining up some festivals to showcase the new songs live, don't expect to see them destroying your local sweatbox anytime soon. Having stopped touring in the wake of covid, the band don't miss it at all. "We want to feel one hundred percent present when on stage, to succumb to the energy and ecstasy. That level of dedication is pretty much impossible to keep up after a week on tour. Especially the older that we get. We never want to feel that routine and numbness ever again. To us, music is passion, and it must never feel like a job. This is what flows through our veins. We can’t keep it in, even if our bodies try to. This music hurts to play, more and more with every passing year. But it’s a delicious pain."

Limited dark grey marbled vinyl

*Please note - image is a mock up only, actual colours may vary on finished product*

Tracklisting

Side A:

1. Ways to Die 01:59
2. Disarm or be Destroyed 02:09
3. Life Knife Death 02:54
4. A Day in the Life of an Arse 02:19
5. Unruled and Unnamed 03:01
6. Skinchanger 02:27

Side B: 

7. Your God is a Corpse 02:04
8. Nail Bomb 03:23
9. Cyanide Messiah 01:36
10. Mayhem Mongrel 02:59
11. Sea of Rust 01:52
12. Age of Skull Fuckery 01:15