Time Signature Round and round and round

Genre: New Wave of Heavy Rock 'n' Roll

There's retro and then there's retro. Deadwolff are all out retro - so much so that, if I didn't know better, I might think that I was listening to a demo tape by some underground metal band from 1983 or something like that. Even their image, with their mullets and moustaches, has early 80s rock written all over it.

Musically, we are dealing with a blend of early 80s traditional heavy metal and hard rock. The band have dubbed this style New Wave of Heavy Rock 'n' Roll, and I guess that is a fitting label. The songs are pretty simple hard rockers for sure, and definitely very enjoyable. They are reminiscent of a lot of the obscure releases that came out of the UK in the late 70s and early 80s as part of NWoBHM. While all the tracks are pretty good, I think my favorite is "Pedal to the Metal" which combines a slightly punky edge with a catchy guitar melody (it reminds me a bit of some of the tracks from Brats' "1980").

The production is rough and unpolished, emulating the sonic appearance of a demo tape. As someone who was involved in the Danish underground extreme metal music scene in the 1990s when we still did make demo tapes, I really do appreciate this. Also, we're not talking black metal style lo-fi production, but rather a late 70s or early 80s style production, so it shouldn't be too harsh to listeners who grew up with the more pristine production style of 2000s metal. The musicianship comes across unpolished but full of potential. That might be a conscious choice by the band, as it fits the concept of Deadwolff very well.

This eponymous EP by Deadwolff is a very enjoyable listen in my opinion. Yes, it's overly retro. Yes, it has a deliberately unpolished production. Yes, it revisits a path trodden in the late 70s and early 80s. Yes, it picks up on all the tropes. But it's not the Sharknado of metal music, because Sharknado is so bad it's good. Deadwolff is so good it's good.