Lupine Moon
Blood of the Wolf
3.8
Hmmmm… where to begin with this album. Lupine Moon is a one-man project, that man being Jim O’Connor, and that becomes apparent very quick into the album. The drums are all electronic and that has become one of my biggest pet peeves, because nine out of ten times they become painful to listen to solely because they are just so utterly boring. The most noteworthy influences of the band have to be Metallica and Opeth, you can kind of imagine what you are getting into. The distorted riffs are similar to older Metallica, think Master of Puppets or And Justice for All era with that slight classical feel to them. There are clean passages similar to Opeth or Metallica also that contain clean vocals that seem to attempt at banking off the Opeth sound. When our ears aren’t being crooned with the soft clean vocals, we are blessed with robot like vocals that are lifeless and boring (not that the overly reverb-laden clean ones are that much better, but they can easily hold their own when compared to the robot vocals).
Not one moment within Blood of the Wolf left me compelled to keep listening further. In addition, the only real reason I did listen further is so that I could give it a fair review. There are some moments where a decent riff or keyboard melody will break into the fold here and there, but ultimately when listening to this it’s obvious to see that unless some major steps are taken to up the music offered, it’s not really going to advance anywhere. I’m sure Jim O’Connor had a good time writing and recording all of it, but quite frankly this is a release that I’m sure will fade into the black as so many unoriginal releases that plague the metal world have done before it.
The production on top of it isn’t really helping either. With guitars that often feel a bit over-distorted or become lost in the mix to the overpowering vocals and drums that feel lifeless do to their electronic nature, there isn’t much to be offered. The clean guitars do have their moments when they sound pleasing to the ears, but that’s not nearly enough to save this album from the deep grave it has already dug itself in my mind. My advice to you, is let this one drift away into that endless abyss of releases I mentioned earlier. In my mind, Blood of the Wolf does not have anything to offer that has not been done by so many others, but better.
