WOLVERINE - Cold Light Of Monday
January 25, 2004, 20 years ago
(Elitist/Earache)
Likers, lovers and listeners of modern day Anathema, Radiohead, The Gathering, Porcupine Tree, My Dying Bride (any era - the quiet bits), Katatonia (quiet bits again) and that Opeth album with the amps turned off should dig this decisively non-Earache and non-earache-inducing band of Swedes. Less prog than The Window Purpose, Cold Light Of Monday samples cinema-like like Floyd, but stays modern and trancy with electro-effects and long, languid lead-ins. It's all about textures, from scratchy synths and vocals, to lots of exotic percussion tones, to bare piano, to only the occasional power chord. And it's all extremely well done, Wolverine succeeding in creating in the listener, the desire to take the trip, mellow bits whetting the appetite for the loud stuff, which, when it comes (see 'The Final Redemption'), sounds cloud-busting and grand. Whence the marks docked? Dumb cover, dumb band name, and less superficially, too much influence... I mean, it was too dead easy coming up with that pedigree wish-listed above.
