Entombed – Wolverine
Blues
(Earache, 1993)
Buy the album here
With
one demon grunt my musical life was changed. A grizzly bear of a riff and thumping drums suddenly
exploded then unexpectedly stopped. A
primal roar burst forth, and the music continued on its destructive path. The moment was over in four seconds, but it
is still one of the most memorable in my listening experiences. The opening of “Demon” tells you everything
you need to know about Entombed’s objective on Wolverine Blues: simple, direct, instinctive, heavy, and hell, even
anti-intellectual. This album is more
concerned with making your guts vibrate than firing synapses, more focused on gigantic
power chord riffing than duelling solos and Classical-inspired structures, and
would rather you fear it than respect it.
Where Death, Carcass, and the emerging death metal mainstream began taking
a surgically exact approach to their music, Entombed decided to down tune, fuzz
out, and ride a Pantera-inspired wave of groove metal success. Wolverine
Blues has been credited with birthing the sub-genre of “Death ‘n’ Roll”, and
in doing so it opened the door for hard rock and heavy metal fans to work their
way backward to the oft intimidating world of death metal. While the album sounds like it wants to kick
you in the face, it is actually politely opening doors for you. How nice of it.
“Demon”
is the centrepiece. It is brash, violent,
and lyrically vacuous, but at its pounding heart it only wants to make you
stomp your feet and bang your head. The
immediacy of the riffs, the pauses, the wild yells all serve that singular
purpose. The direct approach is maintained
by “Full of Hell”, with lyrical insights along the lines of, “I'm organized
chaos but
don't call me stupid I'm insane”, and “Hollowman” with its punchy riffs and drunken-mate vocals. The whole thing clocks in
at around thirty-five minutes of groove-laden, mid-pace riffs, blues-tinged
solos, fat drums, and fatter vocals, but there’s an argument to be made that it
should have been even shorter. While the
riffs are always catchy and there is never a "bad" song,
the first four tracks do the job of the whole album in less than half the
time. Opener “Eyemaster” is the most musically
interesting on the album. Combining the groovier
“death ‘n’ roll” sound with the faster old school death of their first two
albums and throwing in some killer solos, the song stands head and shoulders
above the rest. The buzzsaw guitar sound
and syncopated riffs on “Rotten Soil” are dirty and broken in the best way, and
clearly show the band’s influence on Bloodbath, while title track “Wolverine Blues”
is a sludgy monster that balances the thrashier tracks it follows. Rounded off by “Demon”, Wolverine Blues could have been one of the most legendary EPs of
all time.
It
may not have aged as well as its Stockholm Sound defining predecessors Left Hand Path and Clandestine, but this album’s influence on me is stronger. By giving my fearful little mind enough groove
to hang on to, family friendly satanic imagery, and that rounded sound of mainstream
metal, this album brought me slowly and gently into the death metal fold. Nuzzling in its big, furry arms I was cradled
into the midst of earlier Entombed, Autopsy, and Deicide, but never felt alone or
exposed. It was like having a big brother
to take you to the pub for the first time, but this pub was serving pints of
blood in hollowed out skulls. you paid with your everlasting devotion, and your brother was a viking warrior. Wolverine
Blues will always be my big metal brother, even if he’s a little past it
these days.
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