Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Passion is playful monster that at times never knows the boundaries in which has been set down by tradition; passion finds a way to break past the limitations imposed on the soul and charges without a care into the dark cold world and illuminates it far beyond anyone’s expectations.
It is a particular passion that is stamped right across the Nordic sensation Wolfheart and their new album Tyhiyys, a passion that is far from empty, far removed from the effects of unfulfilled and rarely desired, this is a full onslaught on the ears, the attack of many nations taking offence and no prisoners in the pursuit of all things metal. This is northern Europe’s dynamic pressure on the ear drums and it is one that captures the raw emotion of the barren wasteland that lives around us and yet is joyful in the fervour and inexhaustible machine that the band play as.
The songs on the album are not only fluid in their creation, they are carried with enthusiasm and the sheer devastation of the band’s creativity, they are hungry, the songs are ravenous and for Tuomas Saukkonen, Mika Lammassaari, Joonas Kauppinen and Lauri Silvonen, they are songs that are so air tight that it is a near impossibility to force an argument of censure between them.
As Tyhiyys progresses, the songs grind away at the soul, they push forward ultimatum after ultimatum, yet they are not unkind, they are not without praise for the listener, this is not an album of condemnation as some might suggest with other recordings in the same genre, this is loud, this is destructive but it is also astute and as powerful as benevolent king.
In tracks such as the lengthy and ripping Boneyard, The Flood, Call of The Winter and Dead White, Wolfheart stomp all over the renegade thoughts of disapproval from quarters entrenched in their own bleak ideas and instead show that anything can flourish in the garden of emptiness; that even a single rose can be born in a crack of the void left by Heavy Metal’s illustrious past.
A fantastic album, a genuine joy to behold, Tyhiyys is complete and satisfying.
Wolfheart’s Tyhiyys is released on March 3rd.
Ian D. Hall