Swedish prog-metallers Wolverine are celebrating a glorious return with their first studio album in a decade. Anomalies will be released on 6 February via Music Theories Recordings. Listen to the atmospheric and cinematic first single, A Perfect Alignment.
It’s been a decade since the Söderhamn quintet last released a full album, 2016’s Machina Viva, and four years since their last EP, 2021’s A Darkened Sun, raised hopes that they were back with a vengeance.
Today, singer Stefan Zell is brimming with enthusiasm, fired up by the knowledge that his band – the Machina Viva line-up of Jonas Jonsson (guitar), Thomas Jansson (bass), Marcus Losbjer (drums), and Per Henriksson (keyboards) are to release new music and very soon, a bold new album.
The first song that will see the light of day is ‘A Perfect Alignment.’ “This is actually the first part of a trilogy of songs on the album,” explains Stefan. “The second part being ‘Circuits’ and the third being the album’s opening track ‘A sudden demise’.” Marcus continues, “The initial seed to this song originates maybe about 20 years back, written for a planned concept album that never saw the light of day. It contains several parts based around 5/4, which align together in the end.”
“I think that, in a way, something that runs through the album is getting older,” Zell contemplates. “I didn’t know where I was going. What should I do that will bear meaning in the future? Feeling lost. That is a theme in a way that runs through several songs. I’m happy to say that I’m in a better place today, eight years later.”
“It’s repeating the pattern,” he nods. “But also getting older, going past questions that you might not ask when you’re young. It’s the feeling of not reaching your potential, I think, that describes that situation as well.”
In stark contrast, the upliftingly bright melodies of ‘Nightfall’ represent one of the most immediate and even catchiest songs that Wolverine has ever recorded. Yet the immediate feel of the music is offset by some unremittingly bleak lyrics. “That one is, lyrically, from my really darkest period, where I had death anxiety every night when I went to bed,” Zell admits. “It felt like someone stomping on my chest. Just wanting the night to be over. I was not in a good place in life. But I found the contrast between the music and the lyrics quite tempting in a way. You can almost dance to it once it gets going.”
The dramatic ‘My Solitary Foe’ deals with the relentless, cyclical patterns one goes through dealing with life’s struggles, as Zell sings, “Every stone I turned, another lesson learned, Lost along the way or waiting up ahead for those astray? Well, I can’t say…”
Throughout their career, Wolverine have always carried a similar dark emotional heft to their fellow countrymen Katatonia, driven by a sonic wall of sound. Lyrically too, Zell’s lyrics pack a powerful emotional punch, and on Anomalies he’s at his peak, drawing on those years of exasperation.
Wolverine’s trials and tribulations to get to Anomalies have given Zell plenty of subject matter, as has his own personal life. “I look at all our songs as small snippets of a diary. If you look back through the catalogue, it’s my life as a writer. It’s so amazing to have these snippets of time documented in this way. But I really feel that there are a lot more questions asked about life, ageing, and values. It’s nothing we even thought about when we were in our 20s. It evolves.”
So too has Wolverine evolved. From their earliest days toying with death metal sounds, before adding in a more progressive influence on 1999’s Fervent Dream EP, before setting themselves up as purveyors of the finest in melancholic prog metal, a flag they continue to carry aloft to this day.
Track listing
- A Sudden Demise
- My Solitary Foe
- Circuits
- Nightfall
- This World And All Its Dazzling Lights
- Automaton
- A Perfect Alignment
- Losing Game
- Scarlet Tide
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