Album Review: Powerwolf - "Interludium"

Fair warning, we’re going to spend a good chunk of this review not talking about the album in question.  I’m also going to apologize in advance for inserting myself into the proceedings, which I apologize for every time I do it, and you’d think I’d know better by now.  

I want to take you back to February, on a blustery night, to a theater nestled into the blinding neon heart of Times Square.  Powerwolf, so long now stalwarts of the metal scene worldwide, had finally, FINALLY arrived in the United States to play their first ever show.

The atmosphere was palpably electric.  Never had I felt like this, or sensed the same pure anticipation from the sold-out throngs around me.  Powerwolf’s arrival, so long sought by legions of dedicated American fans, was to be an all-caps EVENT, heretofore unforeseen on these shores.

Normally, when the lights dim at a show is when the crowd cheers the loudest, when the fever pitch reaches the peak of its roiling crescendo, as the pent-up potential energy is allowed its very first sensuous tease of the kinetic.  And while the welcoming cheer was vociferous, on this night it was the roar of appreciation and adulation from the crowd after “Faster Than The Flame” had been recited that was the single most memorable moment of the night.

I am a veteran of several hundred concerts.  I have listened to thousands of albums.  In just a couple short months, I will be forty years old.  While I greatly enjoy the overwhelming majority of shows I go to, because the spectacle of live music is a drug with which I am forever entwined, I am rarely wowed.  

I left the euphoria of that first Powerwolf show firm in the belief that I had seen one of the great shows of my life.  Not just the band, or the music, but the crowd and the whole experience.

And all of that brings us here, to the theoretical reason for those shows in the first place, “Interludium,” the band’s new-ish album that combines six new tracks with four b-sides and rarities, capped by a French language version of “Beast of Gevaudan” which, for reasons I can’t discern, works better than the original.

Anyway, the pre-album press here is correct: there are a lot of strong moments among the six new tracks, but the reasons to be here are the two prominent singles.  “Sainted By the Storm” is an instant Powerwolf classic, pulling elements from Powerwolf’s established catalogue with the jaunty bombast of the best days of Turisas, and just the smallest splash of Alestorm singalong.  It’s simply magnificent, eschewing some of the pure power of the typical Powerwolf riff to give us all an easily accessible tune that bangs around in the ears and refuses to let go.

(It is worth noting that “Altars On Fire,” later on the record, sounds kinda like a poor man’s version of this very same song.)

Conversely, “My Will Be Done” is instantly recognizable in the Powerwolf mold – a galloping riff, some double kick drum, and the peerless vocals of Attila Dorn.  There’s something resembling a breakdown in the middle which is a new, but not unwelcome step for Powerwolf.  Add this cut to the pantheon of great and memorable songs in the band’s idiom.

Also mention worthy are “Wolves of War” and “Wolfborn,” both of which work as permutations of the tried and true formula of the artist.  They are not quite as enthralling as the two singles mentioned above, but that’s not an insult – those two are sublime, these are merely good.  “Wolfborn” in particular has high potential as an anthemic crowd favorite should the band ever return to the United States (hint, hint.)

While there haven’t been any dud Powerwolf records, I personally hadn’t fallen in love with one since “Blessed and Possessed” some eight years ago, so it’s nice to be suckered in again by “Interludium.”  Is it possible that I’m biased by the catharsis of the concert experience?  Sure, but either way, there’s a lot here to like.