Review & Full Album Premiere: Blackwülf, Thieves and Liars
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on February 1st, 2023 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream Blackwülf’s Thieves and Liars in full. Album is out this Friday, Feb. 3, on Ripple Music.]
Now a decade past their first getting together and five years on from their most recent studio release, Oakland, California’s Blackwülf present their fourth album, Thieves and Liars, as their third release via local-to-them outlet Ripple Music. It is the follow-up to 2018’s Sinister Sides (review here), which saw the band collaborate across multiple tracks with founding Bedemon/Pentagram guitarist Geof O’Keefe, and the first Blackwülf offering since the band became a five-piece with guitarist Jesse Rosales joining the established foursome of vocalist Alex Cunningham, guitarist Peter Holmes, bassist Scott Peterson, and drummer Dave Pankenier. Dark in mood and, with a couple notable exceptions, stripped to a core of Sabbathian heavy rock/metal — you’ll hear the transition to the solo from “War Pigs” in “Killing Kind,” and the subsequent title-track plays off the first half of the intro to “Heaven and Hell,” etc.; all duly individualized enough to catch ears of those who’d recognize them but be otherwise the band’s own — the album makes memorable impressions with melodies born out of grunge-era-but-not-quite-grunge styles, Cunningham channeling his inner Layne Staley circa Facelift on opener and lead single “Shadow” while Holmes and Rosales work together for a particularly Dehumanizer-feeling but still kind of C.O.C.-ish central riff.
This is familiar enough ground for Blackwülf, who’ve been dug into classic metal and heavy all along, but the particularly proto-metal spirit they bring to later pieces like the penultimate “Brother” and closer “Cries of a Dying Star” feels like a push toward newer ground than some of the harder-edged early cuts, though no doubt part of that comes from the sprawl side B of Thieves and Liars is given through the inclusion of eight-minute two-parter “Psychonaut/Edge of Light,” interpreting multi-hued psychedelic rock first through a filter of early ’90s grit and then, after a few figurative deep breaths in its midsection, through a surprising turn to drifting, folk-ish acoustics and Mellotron.
That song takes enough of a turn that before they move on to “Brother,” they offer a spacious 48-second interlude in “Mysteries of This,” an echoing break that feels like a bridge back to the reality that is the opening riff of the next track. I can’t recall any such marked departure from Blackwülf previous, but if on their fourth full-length and first as a two-guitar outfit they’re taking the opportunity to experiment while working with producer Jesse Nichols (The Donnas, Ceremony, Ty Segall, many others), they’re certainly entitled to branch out, and it changes the scope of Thieves and Liars on the whole, pulling away some from the more disgruntled perspectives of “Shadow,” “Seems to Me,” “Killing Kind,” “Thieves and Liars” and the centerpiece “Failed Resistance” — which seems time-wise like it is the start of side B but fits thematically better on side A — and giving the each half of the album a more distinct personality. This is relative of course, as even in the beginning of “Psychonaut/Edge of Light,” Blackwülf hold to the crunching tones and urgent punk-via-metal grooves of the earlier tracks, but ‘Edge of Light’ is more than an edge, and it informs everything that comes after, even if the bulk of Thieves and Liars has already happened at that point and cast a different impression.
Is it too stark a contrast? If it was Blackwülf‘s first LP, maybe it would be, but they’re mature as a group and as players and particularly in the context of the lineup change and it being five years since their last release, it’s a reach but the color it brings makes Thieves and Liars stronger, not disjointed. This in part is because of the unflinching quality of songcraft across those earlier cuts, “Shadow” being the longest with a central progression that feels born directly out of C.O.C.‘s “Bottom Feeder (El que come abajo),” starting off not nearly slow enough to be a slog, but carrying an atmospheric weight beyond its sheer tonality as well, porting its attitude and groove to the dead-stop-then-chug of “Seems to Me” and the slower standout hook of “Killing Kind,” which once upon a time might’ve made it to radio and the upward tempo shift into the title-track, which gallops in comparison.
Blackwülf in this way unify their material across that divide and enhance the overall experience such that, after hearing “Brother” and “Cries of a Dying Star,” the ’70s-style push of those songs informs how one hears and interprets the likes of “Seems to Me” and “Killing Kind” — “Shadows” remains a little more leaned specifically toward doom — deepening the album on the whole. This happens as they stay largely consistent in tone and Cunningham‘s vocals, which are by no means unipolar in range or delivery, but serve as an identifiable factor across the span.
Ultimately, the band find room in the nine songs and 37 minutes of Thieves and Liars to expand their style to places it hasn’t gone before — at very least not as it does here — while tightening the structures beneath the songs that are more in what established listeners might think of as their wheelhouse. This is the ideal growth pattern for any act who consider their audience really at all at any point in their process, blending new and old elements to give an idea of where they’re at today without abandoning what they’ve done in the past and alienating those who’ve made the journey with them thus far.
And to be sure, interaction with their audience — i.e., in a live setting — is a considerable aspect of the appeal of Thieves and Liars, and the energy brought to the songs, which border on aggressive without ever fully pushing over the top, is another piece of what draws the work together. Blackwülf are not now and have never been a band who’ve shown a ton of interest in reinventing heavy rock and roll, but they’ve always managed to issue material that has a strength of persona behind it as well as the band’s schooled-in-this sensibilities, and this collection is another vital example of their somewhat underrated appeal.
