Wolfbrigade – “Run With The Hunted” [Album Review]

Wolfbrigade has done very well for themselves, and for d-beat in the twenty-first century thus far, but spinning this record, the blistering speed and ferocity is yet another moment for people to give pause and consider that they have only pushed themselves consistently to deliver some of the fastest and most aggressive crust-influenced punk possible today.

Straight out of the Gothenburg gates where the full-length was produced in the grand tradition of their Swedish contemporaries, “Nomad Pack” doesn’t bother with any niceties or bullshit, just a biting track that swarms the listener’s face and doesn’t let up the intensity throughout the rest of this tight-as-a-war-drum album.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t variety in the rhythm, far from it. “Lucid Monomania” somewhat slows the approach, delivering what I now realise for these guys is ‘mid-tempo’, but could rival Siege or Napalm Death levels of haste. And, too, the variety isn’t cordoned off to separate tracks, but move organically throughout the album, the perfect example of this being “No Reward”, a lightning fast intro that raises the bar in terms of tempo, but then part way through manages to switch it up to lean into its beats some, compelling the listener to raise horns and bang heads.

Overall, this is a doozy of an album that is filled with welcome surprises, and most gloriously of all, will quickly establish itself as one of the finest examples of the d-beat sound for years to come. All this while also nodding to other fellow genres like motor rock and crust, situating itself as just a very good heavy album that I’m sure we can all agree, is delicious to listen to.

Run With The Hunted Track Listing:

01. Nomad Pack
02. Warsaw Speedwolf
03. Lucid Monomania
04. No Reward
05. Kallocain
06. Return To None
07. War On Rules
08. Feral Blood
09. Under The Bell
10. Dead Cold

Run Time: 26:53
Release Date: April 28, 2017

Check out the album Run With The Hunted