Review of Wolverine - Cold Light of Monday

Elitist records haven’t done too badly for themselves this past year. For 2003, they’ve got two of my favorite metal releases, Ephel Duath’s amazing The Painter’s Palette and Forest Stream’s Tears of Mortal Solitude. Not too shabby. But, unfortunately, they can’t all be winners, as Cold Light of Monday, Wolverine’s latest “opus,” has proven. Even standing on its own, this album is devoid of anything that will captivate listeners, but considering the fabulous album that it’s following up, it’s an even larger disappointment. Where on The Window Purpose each song had its own identity, Cold Light of Monday lacks any distinguishable characteristics in its actual songs (of eleven tracks there are technically only six real songs) to set them apart from one another. I really dislike this album to the point that I’ve been putting off reviewing it for a few months now. It’s like the band’s intention was to tease listeners with glimpses of hope for something great only to revert to their boring pseudo-emotional quasi-prog rock. The transition from the song Dusk to the song Tied With Sin sums this up very well. Dusk is a mere two minutes long, of which the first minute is just ambience with chant-like vocals followed by an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer or King Crimson-esque prog rock romp that is just phenomenal. Then comes Tied With Sin, in no way feeding off of or building upon what came before it, it’s just a boring song with vocals that sound as though they were sung on the verge of tears (probably because the vocalist realized how bad the album was shaping up to be). Of the six actual songs, one is very good. Pantomime has enough variation between the moody and subdued feel of the rest of the album and more aggressive moments with some very nice keyboard parts and, for once, good use of emotive vocals that don’t go overboard (though, to his credit, the singer is never as over-the-top as those in Pain of Salvation, for instance). However, a five-minute song worth listening to hardly makes up for the remaining lackluster forty-five minutes. In the prog rock genre, this was one of my most anticipated releases of the year. Hands down, it’s one of the biggest disappointments. I figured that when they recorded it twice to make sure it turned out perfectly it definitely couldn’t let down, but having listened to the album I think they were just tricking themselves into believing that a shoddy production job was what made the album bad the first time around. What made the album bad both times is lacking songwriting and pure pretension.

Release Details

Wolverine

Cold Light of Monday

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