Hour Of The Wolf
Power of the Wolf
6
Rollicking, straightforward punk always seemed like such a fish in a barrel to me. Here’s a musical style with which success is more contingent upon energetic performance and adherence to genre traditions than technical merit or innovation; all you have to do is love it and know it, so how can you miss? Well, if you’re Hour of the Wolf, you don’t. This Power of the Wolf EP is essentially disposable, but it’s a refreshingly entertaining listen and great driving-around-in-the-summer fodder.
There’s nary a surprise to be found here, and that’s fine by me. Hour of the Wolf abidingly invoke every punk rock stratagem they’ve gleaned from their apparently SST and Epitaph-heavy record collection, and the results will surely teleport many of you back to the halcyon days of rocking The First Four Years and Answer That and Stay Fashionable on the bus to high school. “Eat You Alive” lopes out of the gates with guitars that borrow equally from The Misfits and a noisier Motorhead, coupling them with a screaming Tim Armstrong chorus and a classically incoherent Greg Ginn guitar solo. The references go on. Pre-emasculation AFI shines through on “Spit It Right Back,” while the bluesy guitar sketches that permeate Power of the Wolf hint at a background rooted in psychobilly or the proto-punk of The Stooges and MC5. There are songs here about zombies, lunatics, cannibals, and pretty much every other expected subject short of Jackie Kennedy, and the album closes with—what else?—a note-for-note cover of Black Flag’s “Fix Me.”
One of the reasons I find this style of music so appealing is the lack of pretension that comes with the refusal to experiment, and Hour of the Wolf are as unassuming and homey of a band as you’ll find. Cheap’n’easy fun on CD, a probable headrush of adrenaline live, and unlikely to last for more than another year or so, these guys are as punk as it gets nowadays. Horns up to’em.
