Description

One sided 12” single on black vinyl with lyric insert. Limited 300 numbered copies

German black metal act Wolfsschrei started out in Thuringia back in 2004. Their debut album Feasting My Hatred was released a year later and it was followed by the Torture Of A Human Soul 3-track EP. Wolfsschreit dont perform a specific style of black metal, not a French-sounding band, not a Darkthrone clone instead they play some sort of aggregate of black metal’s various styles and sounds congealed into a whole. People ask for primers on the black metal genre and others give them advice and suggestions, usually in the canon of classic black metal albums. Wolfsschrei, on the other hand, actually sounds like what we know as Black Metal these days. It is what you hear when you think of those words in your head. It helps as well that it’s quite good. Wolfsschrei plays a German style of black metal that really just forms an average of other styles of black metal. The riffs are mostly tremolo-based and fluctuate between a Germanic style of melody and a somewhat atonal, Darkthrone-style crunching dissonance, both tempered with an almost depressive, rainy sort of musical texture. Drums are simple and straightforward- slow blasts, rock-based depressive sections, and simple fills, while vocals are a straightforward screech you’ve heard a thousand times before. Wolfsschrei’s music tends to hum and throb with a bleary, modern sense of energy, distorted and static to the point of an almost complete lack of identity- yet that somehow works. Wolfsschrei’s music isn’t so much meant to be a statement of identity and style so much as a very immediate, present sense of what black metal is at a certain moment- which paradoxically makes it reflect the genre better than nearly anything else. If you’re seeking something brilliant and classic, this is not it. However, Wolfsschrei’s music seems almost more inherently relevant due to its total and intentional irrelevancy. Torture Of A Human Soul is going to last forever simply because it was never built to last- it’s black metal to the core.

Track list:
1. Innermost Scenario
2. Torture Of A Human Soul
3. Lost In Void