Wolfbrigade - Life Knife Death

Wolfbrigade – Life Knife Death
Release Date: 13th September 2024
Label: Metal Blade Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Punk, Hardcore, Crust, D-Beat.
FFO: Discharge, Motörhead,
Review By: Mark Young

Can you be too angry? I don’t ask this question often, but given the state of play, there seems to be a lot to be angry about. Especially as you navigate your journey through life, there is always something that can wind you up. Now, place that in the context of a band that has 30 years in the game and is as angry now as they were then. And there is a lot for them to be angry about.

Ways to Die is straight in, lead break with a build that immediately sets the scene for how the next 26 minutes will play out: Fast, frenetic and no fucks given. There is no wasted time here, no fat to be removed. It’s razor sharp, with a superb mix of punk and thrash picking that is just seamlessly melded together. Disarm or be Destroyed changes the attack a little by throwing in the quickest of melody breaks before it’s back to kicking teeth in. The title track slows down a little and by now you can get a handle on how the rest of the album will play out just based on these three songs. Life Knife Death rocks along, that Motörhead influence is there, the swagger in full effect and in all honesty it’s probably one minute too long, but they throw in a suitably filthy lead break before it’s back to rocking out. They cited the Beatles as an influence on A Day in the Life of an Arse which could be tongue in someone’s cheek, but it’s another variation on mid-paced Motorpunk, and will no doubt translate well once they play this live.

As I’ve said, you get the creeping feeling that there won’t be an awful lot of variety in how the album sounds, and then they drop Unruled and Unnamed with a spot-on opening section that promises to lean into a thrash direction, but no, it’s back into that straight ahead no-frills attack. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, if you love punk, hardcore and the combination of the two then this is right up your street. Others might find it to be a little boring, because the tracks that follow on: Skinchanger (mid-paced, stomp), Your God Is a Corpse (Hyper speed attack), Nail Bomb (back to mid-paced stomp) and so on right to the closing tracks Sea of Rust and Age of Skull Fuckery they don’t deviate from the template they have set themselves. It is fast and direct and there are no bad tracks on here at all, the main issue I have, is that once you have heard one of them, then you have generally heard all of them.