Review of Ywolf - Night of the Werewolf

Ywolf is the brainchild of Gabriel Wolf, one of the four bands in which he is the main man; all bands being heavy on the symphonic elements. Ywolf can best be described as dark symphonic gothic music, hardly metal at all, although there are some black metal growls found within Night of the Werewolf. Let me start off by saying a lot of straight up symphonic stuff like this really doesn't do much for me. It's not always the case, as I have greatly enjoyed my fair share of electronic albums in my time. This, however, doesn't do too much for me at all. With keyboards and sound effects leading the way around every corner, I became quickly bored with this release. Most of the music is at a slow or mid doom-like pace, which helps in maintaining the gothic atmosphere provided. The neo-classical elements are also quite heavy and are composed rather well. The vokills are comprised of spoken word, black metal rasps, and the occasional death growl. They're decent and do the job, but are hardly able to save the lackluster music. Since I don't listen to too much music like this, the best I can think to compare it to is Mortiis' earlier work (pre-The Smell of Rain-era stuff). Lots of chanting of course is here, but Ywolf actually leaves the listener with much more when it comes to vokills. However, I don't think the music composed quite reaches some of the stuff Mortiis was able to craft in his "battle-music" days. What's offered here is decent, but I'm not going to lose any sleep if I don't hear Night of the Werewolf ever again. Sure, there's some cool keyboard, neo-classical stuff here, but after about two listens, any excitement I got from this took a silver bullet in the heart and bit the dust. The only time I could really see myself pulling out an album like this would be for a night of some Castlevainia on my Playstation, but then again the music composed in those games is almost as good as this in itself. So, in the end my opinion would be to pass this one up.

Release Details

Ywolf

Night of the Werewolf

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