Werewolves – You’re Weak And You Know You’re Weak
Werewolves – You’re Weak And You Know You’re Weak
Back On Black
Release date: 09/10/26
Review by Jon Deaux
7.5/10
Seven records in seven years, and floating somewhere is the rumor that WEREWOLVES have vowed to produce ten records in ten years, or kill themselves in a mass suicide attempt. This is not normally what one sees in a band biography. Yes, I have heard of bass players claiming that their record was “recorded live to tape in a haunted barn” because this was cool enough for their manager. But I have never heard of a band whose biography was filled with death threats and deadlines. Most bands see a recording schedule as an option; WEREWOLVES see it as a hostage situation they are intent on doing on their own terms, including the ransom note and everything. Except that the hostage is the same person writing the ransom note; and this person is also the entire band, as well as you and me – since from this day forward every year you expect me to be worried that this is the last record that this band will ever release, period.
The mad commitment runs through every single second of “You’re Weak And You Know You’re Weak”, an album that is not merely released, but invades your house, throwing your front door clear across your house and eating right from your refrigerator without so much as breaking the eye contact. This is the caveman music in the true sense of the word – primal, raw, and primal death metal, harkening back to a time before the concepts of language, fire, and even a chorus were invented. At some point in our distant past, a caveman found out that two stones smashed together produced an excellent sound; and this is something that the WEREWOLVES proved in their last seven records – the way that men prove in general: once you give us a trick, we’ll use it to the very grave and call it a personality.
“Uroboric Fuckwit” opens the album in as aggressive a manner as if a bar fight had erupted while you walked in asking for a drink. There’s no buildup, no courteous riff that clears its throat – just immediate and brutal attack as if glassed by a stranger who insists that it happened because of your absolute provocation. “Tank Habit” continues with the same style, heavy, mechanized, and faintly addictive. You can only see the picture of a person at a recovery meeting, insisting that he doesn’t have a drinking problem – he has a tank problem and can’t seem to stop buying them. Tanks are everywhere in the garden by now, and his wife had enough of it. Honestly, a smaller vehicle, same enthusiasm in every bloke who bought himself a motorbike at the age of forty-five for the same reason.
“Burn It To The Ground” does exactly what the title promises – burns stuff right to the ground while the rhythm section appears to collapse the building with sheer force of will. “Triple Negative” is there in full, vicious glory that songs on this album were intended to have – in this case it means sounding like mammogram results. Pounded with the blast beat upon blast beat until the song becomes somewhat resembling some kind of medical emergency that requires explanation from a specialist. “So Say All Of Us” is the closest thing to a band anthem on the record, if you could call the anthem of a bunch of convicts united for the first time in their lives with the righteous anger over being banned from pubs for the same thing.
“Fields Of Suicide” sits right in the middle of the album like a shotgun left unattended in your house during the dinner party. Nowhere else in death metal could it have been a joke of a title, promising shock value, theatric threat of doom and pure entertainment. But in the knowledge of the fact that the band really did commit to dying if they failed to surpass themselves in their next three records, it loses any theatrical value and acquires a new meaning, becoming disturbing for the sincerity. Not that the production value or the growled vocals contribute to the feeling of disturbance – they just remind you that these boys really might mean it.
“We March” turns abruptly towards military and becomes the soundtrack of an invasion that wasn’t declared, filled with locks of marching drum lines and driven in a purposeful way. And “The Song Of Stupid Men” might just be the thesis statement of this record in the form of a deep cut – a song that praises making some really stupid decisions and loving the consequences. It is strangely honest of the band to have written the song with such a blatant title – it is the musical equivalent of a bloke getting himself a black eye and, instead of inventing a story of how he got hit by a door, say that he headbutted his friend for fun and would gladly do it again. Title track concludes things with restating the accusation of the album’s name in your face once again, only this time – a bit louder because maybe you didn’t hear it the first eight times, which is impossible, because your ears are bleeding, your neighbors are leaving you notes, and you don’t answer the phone anymore.
It was all mixed and mastered by Joe Haley of Psycroptic in Hobart, who, according to some reports, had apparently lost the ability to speak anywhere in the process of listening to WEREWOLVES’ record, a detail which I chose to accept as a fact. I see him now wandering the Tasmanian wilderness in complete silence, expressing himself in interpretive dance while pointing at the mixing desk, like a war veteran points at the hillside he can’t discuss anymore. This man sat in a room with this album for hours and emerged unable to form words, which, to put it frankly, is the same effect this record has on a bloke’s stamina in the bedroom – over too soon, deeply regretted, and yet somehow he is telling everyone in the pub it lasted forever.
Mitchell Nolte’s cover art returns to perform what he is good at. It looks like a nightmare you have after eating dodgy sushi late at night with war documentary playing in the background, half digested and fully cursed. It is strangely restrained for the whole album, which tells me something about the content of the record.
The tour list looks like shows that are specifically designed to make people hate the band, beginning with such people as Archspire, Mayhem, Abbath, Ingested and Ulcerate – a bunch of people who loathe every blasted bit of dirty blast beat forced into their throats and then queue up to buy the album anyway. And this is the trick of this band, hiding behind all the caveman theatrics. No one wants to get mugged in the dark alley. Somehow, however, when they walk away from it – half of them end up wearing the WEREWOLVES shirt, just like hostages who developed some kind of a love for the van that kidnapped them. Whatever you think about raping someone in a parking lot – at least these boys showed respect by selling you the t-shirt after, which is something that most blokes forget to do the morning after.
There’s something almost admirable about how thoroughly the WEREWOLVES stripped death metal of everything but its core – rage, volume, repetition, and possibly sincere desire to die – and made it feel like the most alive music in the genre.
TACKLISTING:
01. Uroboric Fuckwit
02. Tank Habit
03. Burn It To The Ground
04. Triple Negative
05. So Say All Of Us
06. Fields Of Suicide
07. We March
08. The Song Of Stupid Men
09. You’re Weak & You Know You’re Weak
LINKS:
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