Another awesome release by our dear friends in Ripcord Records, who are becoming more and more the go-to label for everything heavy and melodic, yet intricate and underground in the UK, or should I say in Scotland? Anyway, Wolv3s is a new outfit formed by veterans who want to showcase their love for everything between Thrice and Dillinger.
The mixture is not new under the British sun, but the way that Wolv3s are brewing it up, is quite extraordinary. That some veterans come up with some new ways or genres is also nothing new and Post-Hardcore from the UK is definitely having a go at the moment, just think of :indifferent engine: - surely a product of its time, when one thinks of all the shitty things going on in the UK over the last decade, the manifold PMs, the bastards Farage and his fellows, not to mention the idiotic idea of Brexit (thanks Cameron, once again!). There is surely a kind of political drive to Wolv3s’ music, just take the second track ”Reformed (Try Love)”: We get a very clear spoken word passage in which the vocalist explains that many of those in charge do not give a f*** about the lower classes and that we are being misled in order to be more easily controlled. He ends his tirade with an enumeration of people (incl. scumbags Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and many others) and ends it with the sentence ”Christ what a shower of cunts”. Well, one could not have said it any better. This just to show what side of things Wolv3s are on and when they show in many titles that they also care about the inner dimension of things, it should be noted that we are not dealing with a band trying to out of some woke drive, but because caring for others is key to the survival of our scene and of us as individuals. Together we stand, divided we fall.
Talking of vocalists – this is a fivepiece mit four vocalists! Thus it definitely something unusual, especially when you think about the fact that there is never a lack of vocal quality, it all sounds as if performed by one person, who just simply knows how to vary his performance. Additionally, it also shows an eye for tiny details as a whole and a clear drive of every band member to get his say on things. Musically they put togeher a broad array of songs that goes from clear Math-Core (”Reformed (Try Love)” to more Post-Hardcore infused tracks (”The Rich Man and The Sea” or the final track ”Emergency Equipment”). The latter is surely a very good example of what Wolv3s are all about: A very harsh beginning, close to what DEP did on some of their more straightforward tracks and then we get the calmer passages that remind me of the ”Vheissu” period of Thrice and then the next one is like an English version of the Japanese masters envy, only to go full circle and arrive at the manic intensity of the first part again.
When we take all of these things and put them together one can see why Ripcord added the band to its roster. Musically they provide all the love for Hardcore that has been at the core of Ripcord since its inception (remember the Fugazi tribute comp at the very beginning of their existence), we have a UK-based band playing with a lot of technical prowess and the aforementioned ear for detail, hooks and melodies. Their social and political conscience also goes perfectly with the label’s morals and values (remember their You-compilations, whose proceedings all went to charity!).
And they even have a specific kind of humor that mirrors the Black Keys and their Brothers record because the cover of the record shows the following sentence: ”This is a Record called Self-Titled by a Band called Wolves” - now we only need to clue up whether they want to be spellt with E or 3. But apart from that – great record, lads!
