Call of the Wild

Call of the Wild, released on July 16, 2021, is Powerwolf's eighth studio album, produced by Jens Bogren with Joost van den Broek and finished at Fascination Street Studios in Sweden. The orchestral and choral weight established on the previous record stays; what changes is how sharply the songs are coloured apart from one another. The subject is werewolf legend, treated specifically rather than generically. “Beast of Gévaudan” takes the eighteenth-century French case, “Varcolac” the Romanian tradition and “Blood for Blood (Faoladh)” the Irish one — a song per region. The opening “Faster Than the Flame” leads with speed; “Dancing with the Dead” changes the scene with a bouncing rhythm and a bright melody. “Glaubenskraft,” sung in German, briefly pushes the band's own origin to the front. The title track moves from a quiet opening into a wide chorus, and a later version added Hansi Kürsch of Blind Guardian. Through to the closing “Reverent of Rats,” eleven songs hold one temperature while moving back and forth between liturgical language and animal folklore. This is the record on which Powerwolf worked out how to repeat its own style without letting it go flat.