(((O))) : Werewolves – My Enemies Look and Sound Like Me

I can never tell when listening to furious, paint-stripping blast-beat-ridden foul-mouthed filth delivered directly at my ears whether I should be insulted gravely or be thankful that I am being allowed into the band’s collective ire. Or just laugh.
This album invites that conundrum. Because Werewolves appear to delight in dishing it out. Either they are having an absolute blast(beat) barking puerile abuse (“you fucking fuckers, you fucking fucking fucking fucking fucks”, for example) at objects of hatred, or they indeed hate everyone – including the people who pay good money to listen to them.

We suspect it is the former, because this is so mired in anger and cartoonish gruel (“I hope you catch the plague!” one vocalist rasps in the final track, ‘Do Not Hold me Back’) that they would wind up being locked up or living as hirsute hermits doom-scrolling nutjobs on Rumble.

This manifesto of mayhem is very well done and the musicianship is top quality; a near-relentless barrage of blackened death-grind-thrash-something. ‘Destroyer of Worlds’ (the song with the aforementioned fuck-peppered poetry) is the only point in the album when the speed eases up. And that is only for a couple of minutes and even in these slow parts it is no less intense. There are no guitar solos. Hell, there is barely space to breathe.

And when you’re in the right frame of mind – preferably not behind the wheel of a car or caring for small children – it really does hit the spot. When you’ve had a terrible day or you just want to vent, there’s something life-affirming listening to a man in his forties, who presumably has a loving partner and family, belch “If you shitstains be washed away, the loss of you becomes my gain”.

If you heard Werewolves’ previous albums, The Dead are Screaming, What a Time to be Alive and From the Cave to the Grave, you won’t be surprised. You could lay all four back-to-back and it would sound like it was one long bile-filled rant at the state of the world and the bastards contained within. Progression is not this band’s strong point – which is probably a good thing.

Indeed, bassist Sam Bean (yes, him from Berserker) almost blew a gasket when Echoes and Dust asked him in 2022 how he wanted the band to progress in future recordings. “It’s all about regression with us, mate,” he said after a volley of abuse. “We like the Japanese aesthetic approach of removing the unnecessary, although we modify that to removing the progress.” So that was us told.

Actually, at this juncture we must warn that with almost every other Werewolves release, a cataclysmic event occurred. Australian wildfires? Covid? The storming of the Capitol? All Werewolves’ fault. So now that they have spawned another one, should we be worried? Possibly, although the band admitted that they almost succeeded in destroying themselves, rather than the globe, with the release of Enemies. And anyway, I am writing this almost a month after the album’s release and nobody has died… yet.