Word, sound, power, evil, and pure blackeness are some of the words that come to my mind when I hear the new WOLVHAMMER album, The Obsidian Plains, out now via Profound Lore Records. Actually, every time I hear this blast of primal terror, I have visions of the clouds going black and raining down blood on the skulls of the non believers! WOLVHAMMER went to a whole other planet of gnarly rawness while creating this ultra heavy and dense piece of sonic sickness. What slaps me in the grill with The Obsidian Plains is the amount of growth I hear in the crafting of these songs. I totally respect the fact that WOLVHAMMER had the courage to expand on their wicked foundation and pushed themselves to another sphere of blackened hate. The songs on this album are full of intense drama and laced with dark epic grooves that get under your skin and fester. Wolvhammer were extra smart in the way that they wrote and had this record produced – the tunes have this vastness about them, while still sounding dirty as fuck! The amount of rancid awesome sinister melody that you hear will leave you in awe and begging for more. The riffage on The Obsidian Plains is deadly; it’s like you are listening to a flesh-eating disease devouring your eardrums until it reaches your brain. WOLVHAMMER injected this album with loads of cryptic emotion and a slow, creeping sense of intelligence that gives each song a special energy that’s almost trance-like. This record kills with bursts of feral punk sorcery. When the song “Bones of the Pious” starts bleeding loudly through your speakers, and the raw torment seeps into your bloodstream, then you only begin to know the force of The Obsidian Plains. I’m so impressed that this band constructed a record that really grows on you with each listen- I think one of the big reasons for this is because of all of the killer layers of despair that the band built into this record. Just listen to the intro of “Ghost in the Water” – you get this feeling of loneliness before being pushed off a cliff of metallic wonder into the soil of pain. WOLVHAMMER’s vocals are graveyard screams that the whole universe needs to hear, and they go perfectly with the chaotic musical angst they ride! This record should be in the collection of any and everyone who lives for that kick ass magical hate that gets you hyped…WOLVHAMMER is the answer!
[audio:http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/03-Bones-of-the-Pious.mp3|titles=WOLVHAMMER Bones of the Pious]
[audio:http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/05-Shadowhorn.mp3|titles=WOLVHAMMER Shadowhorn]

Lamar Helms
November 20, 2011 at 3:17 pm
This album is great!