Out Now
Back On Black Records
Melbourne death metal savages Werewolves have just released their most awful album yet, titled The Ugliest of All. It is their first on Back On Black Records, and its release coincided with a new track + video titled I Want To Be Offended. We do not do single reviews around these parts, though, so how about we tell you about the album, which is allegedly an increasingly unlistenable barrage of truly hideous music!
Werewolves immediately release a hideous barrage of intense death metal riffs and intense double kicks in the opening moments of Fools Of The Trade. For those who have been taking notice, you have already heard this track alongside the other pre-released tracks, Rats Versus Snakes & Skullbattering. If this opening track is anything to go by, this album will be blistering and brutal.
What more could you expect, though, from this Australian death metal supergroup featuring Dave Haley (Psycroptic, King, Ruins, Abramelin, Blood Duster, The Amenta), Matt Wilcock (Akercocke, The Berzerker, Abramelin, Shotgun Mistress), and Sam Bean (The Berzerker), than a half an hour of super-aggressive super-angry blackened death metal? A half hour that coincides with a music video for the next track I Want to Be Offended, which captures the current climate of performative howling online outrage with a soundtrack of grinding guitars and blast beats.
Skullbattering instantly lives up to its name, with ridiculously fast blast beats and guitar riffing carnage. As self-proclaimed lead idiot, Sam commented, “There is not one single slow song on this album, not an iota of mercy, and anyone who thought they detected melody or musicianship on our previous albums will be devastated. I am fatter than ever before, with a face the shade of glazed ham, and the lyrics shall crush all to a level of moronic dribbling incapacitation”. He is correct so far.
“You think I am stupid, you think I am some sort of fucking cu@t? Some fucking Twat?”, and some other random gypsy dribbling after that, and then riffs. Many riffs, many snare cracks and many hideous guttural growls. The Unoriginal Sin seems pretty sinful, but who are we to judge over here at HEAVY? Only God (Lemmy), shall judge us!
The Enshittification is an interesting name for a track, and we are pretty sure that is a word they made up. We’ve been wrong before, spell check didn’t pick it up, and Google tells us “Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a pattern in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers (such as advertisers), and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders”. Anyway, it is fuckin brutal in case you had not guessed yet.
You could spend all day looking up the meaning of the titles of death metal songs, but you have not got time for that, and neither do we really. In case you were wondering, though, the next track, Logorrea (although possibly a misspelling of logorrhea, or not), is excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness. That pretty much defines every death metal track ever, does it not, and this is no exception.
“Play the Fat Riff, Play it!”. And they do, in an epic battle called Rats Versus Snakes. The riffs, at times are a little slower than the earlier attempts, but the drums are relentless and soul-penetrating. Evil laughter fills the bridge of the song, and the ongoing ghoulish vocals emulsify the track.
Like Slaves to the Blast, the hideous singing dancing death-metal ballsacks in Werewolves used Joe Haley (PSYCROPTIC) to mix and master the album, and their artwork was again provided by Mitchell Nolte, the beleaguered artist of the previous albums, who has an unfathomable well of horror in his soul that he draws upon every time he’s commissioned to another cover, The band dares you to study the artwork closely.
The album ends with the title track, The Ugliest of All, and it is possibly the fastest track on the album, if that is even possible with the eight tracks preceding it. You could almost say it is the ugliest of all the tracks. Oh wait, there is that bit of melody that they mentioned earlier. And there is another blast beat!
Have we used the word brutal too many times yet? Fuck it, it is Brutal!
