Blackwulf to Release New Album Sinister Sides & Perform at SXSW with Geof O’Keefe
In case you were wondering what ‘keeping good company’ looks like, it probably looks something like bringing Pentagram/Bedemon founder Geof O’Keefe onstage with you to perform at the release show for your new album (on which he also appears) at SXSW this March in Austin, Texas. The laudable move will be undertaken by Oakland aggro heavy rockers Blackwulf as they look to follow-up 2015’s Oblivion Cycle with their next album for Ripple Music, dubbed Sinister Sides. New Year’s Day would seem to be as good a time to make the announcement as any, so what the hell.
You might recall Bedemon released the Symphony of Shadows (discussed here) full-length in 2012 and went on to play Psycho California in 2015 with Wino in the frontman role alongside O’Keefe (interview here). 2015 also saw Relapse reissue the collection Child of Darkness of classic material from the band first founded in 1973.
Blackwulf makes the association public thusly:
BLACKWULF – SINISTER SIDES
The sold-out successes of 2015’s “Oblivion Cycle” (Ripple Music) and 2014’s “Mind Traveler” (Wickerman) releases prompted metal luminaries as mighty as Lars Ulrich (Metallica) and Geof O’Keefe (original Pentagram) to pick up on copies of the albums and publicly name check the band.
Combining vintage ‘70s head banging riffs with doom cloaked soundscapes and vintage heavy metal and hard rock, BLACKWULF is bracing for even greater heights of heaviness with their upcoming Ripple Music follow-up release, “Sinister Sides”. The eight-song album comes complete with gatefold and colored vinyl, and finds the ‘Wulf ambitiously venturing farther afield, deep into extended vintage hard rock sonic jams and dark breakdowns, all the while keeping one matted paw within their established heavy headbanging riff songwriting approach.
The band, unchanged from its original lineup since 2012, features singer Alex Cunningham, guitarist Pete Holmes, bassist Scott Peterson, and drummer Dave Pankenier.
Something classic is made new again: joining BLACKWULF on “Sinister Sides” as a special guest lead guitarist is doom legend Geof O’Keefe, one of the founding members of Pentagram and Bedemon.
O’Keefe’s discovery and subsequent affinity for the band led Blackwulf to invite him to play some lead guitar (and even a gong!) as a special guest on “Sinister Sides”.
O’Keefe’s trademark doom vibrato and vintage guitar heaviness is featured on three tracks on the album: “Dead to the World”, “Sinister Sides” and a blistering cover of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love”.
The chemistry is next level: O’Keefe is “very happy with what resulted” and hails the new Blackwulf album as “easily their best result to date, with extremely strong material and arrangements…the production is superb”. Additionally, O’Keefe will be storming the stage alongside the band at the official Ripple Music showcase at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin Texas in March 2018.
Blackwulf’s “Sinister Sides” will be officially released at the South by Southwest Festival, and the band will support it taking to the road, with gigs across the US and jumping across to the UK for a short run anchored by an appearance at Desertfest London in May 2018.
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