Driven by Sonic Obsession

It’s almost impossible to point out how impressive DeWolff’s mixture of mid-sixties Bluesrock, late sixties Psychedelia and early seventies Hard Rock is without referring to their young age. Four amazing releases and the three amazing Dutch musicians are still barely in their twenties – in fact, drummer Luka van de Poel has yet to reach his twenties. And there’s hardly any band doing it better, by not focusing solely on either of the genres they’re covering. In deed, on ‘IV’, DeWolff still plays a tasteful cocktail of The Doors, Deep Purple, Zappa, Pink Floyd and latter day Beatles.

Despite the massive sound on ‘IV’, there’s still only three guys doing this. The band’s power lies in the fact that neither Robin Piso’s vintage keyboards, neither Pablo van de Poel’s guitar and vocals, neither Luka van de Poel’s drums are a dominant factor in the music. They all work together to create an irresistable sound that sounds authentically old school. If someone had told me – prior to knowing the band of course – that this was truly something released sometime between 1967 and 1971, I would have bought it.

On the aptly titled ‘IV’, the band seems to have opted for a slightly lighter and looser sound than on its relatively dark predecessor ‘Orchards/Lupine’, but the overall sound is still undeniably DeWolff. There’s the Hammond-heavy Rocker ‘Crumbling Heart’, which is slightly reminiscent of ‘Gold And Seaweed’ from the debut EP, the band’s trademark misguidingly light-hearted sounding songs like ‘Devil’s Due’ and opening track ‘Voodoo Mademoiselle’ and the Doors-like, Psych-Bluesy slowburner ‘Six Holes & A Ghost’. One of the album’s highlights is ‘The Only Thornless Rose’, a strong psychedelic number with a sense of mystery in its sound, carried by Pablo van de Poel’s awesome riffs and some strong work on mellotron and Hammond by Piso.

But the true treat of ‘IV’ are the last 5 tracks that form the B-side of the album – let’s face it, you need to hear an album like this on vinyl – collectively called ‘A Mind Slip’. This 20-minute Psych-fest is the perfect conclusion to this record. The overture of ‘Devil On A Wire/The Telephone’ is slightly orchestral, going into the dark, Zappa-esque ‘Black Hole Raga’, continuing that fashion into ‘Sixth Dimension Blues/The Telephone Pt. II’, with a transition that is almost soundtrack-like, much like the following ‘Astral Awareness’ – as if that title wasn’t pretty self-explanatory already – concluding in subdued Rocking with ‘Vicious Times’, which spots brilliant solos by both Van de Poel brothers. The string section present in the entire multi-part suite adds a whole new dimension to DeWolff’s sound. It’s a simply brilliant batch of songs. The only downside is that I fear this is going to push the utterly brilliant ‘The Thrills That Come Along With The Landing Of A Flying Saucer’ off the regular DeWolff set.

If, by any chance, you like music from the late sixties and early seventies – and I don’t see why not, because that was the beginning of the best decade in musical history – you need to hear DeWolff. And if you love the band like I do already, you can blindly purchase ‘IV’. As with every album, the band tries their hand at a new direction without sounding radically different and therefore succeeds at moving forward without alienating their audience. Many artists twice or even three times the age of DeWolff’s members should watch and learn.

Recommended tracks: ‘The Only Thornless Rose’, ‘Six Holes & A Ghost’, ‘Black Hole Raga’, ‘Crumbling Heart’

Sure, there’s loads of new albums that I needed to cover these last few weeks, but sometimes, I just need to plug a classic. Like this one. Of course, I am eternally grateful to Black Sabbath for inventing Heavy Metal and to me, this is the crowning achievement of the Ozzy Osbourne-era. This is Black Sabbath at its most powerful and compositionally at its most brilliant, although the Dio-fronted ‘Heaven And Hell’ would top even this seven years later. Maybe ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ isn’t as revolutionary as the first two albums, but it is the album where Heavy Metal came into its own.

After the wildly experimental ‘Volume 4’, the band allegedly found themselves without inspiration until they retreated to the supposedly haunted Clearwell Castle in Southwest England. Haunted or not, what they have found there was the inspiration they were hoping for. The crushing main riff to the title track, often labelled “the riff that saved Black Sabbath”, is said to have come to Tony Iommi while he was working in the dungeons.

Like on any good Black Sabbath album, the riffs of such caliber are all over the place. ‘A National Acrobat’ is a goosebumps-inducing slab of early Heavy Metal riffing, ‘Sabbra Cadabra’, while being a bit lighter and almost Rock ‘n’ Roll in the lyrical department, has a couple of brilliant riffs to carry the song, ‘Killing Yourself To Live’ and its ever increasing intensity and also the brilliantly progressive closing track ‘Spiral Architect’ is chock full of them. Luckily, none of those riffs have taken any space at expense of drummer Bill Ward’s and bass god Geezer Butler’s almost Jazzy interplay.

The band’s progressive tendencies that were clearly present – maybe even excessively – on ‘Volume 4’ are still here. Especially on the latter half of the record, starting with the only minor flaw of the album, ‘Who Are You’. While still a fairly decent song, the idea of doing this entirely with synthesizers is a failed experiment to me. A few guitars may have done the trick. The medieval, flute-backed bridges in ‘Looking For Today’ were a better idea and what can I say about ‘Spiral Architecht’ that the music itself doesn’t already say?

Performance-wise, this is Ozzy Osbourne’s finest hour. He pushes himself vocally beyond what he can reasonably do. That may be why he isn’t doing any of these songs live anymore, but this is Ozzy at his most powerful. No more bored ‘Iron Man’-delivery, this is raw power. And the rest of the band is as good as always and just… loud! And tight-but-loose, in the best Led Zeppelin tradition.

If I had to name 10 records that every Metalhead should own, there would be two of Black Sabbath and ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ should be one of them. Everyone into Metal should own the first six (yes, people, six!) Black Sabbath albums, but as far as the Ozzy-albums go, this is the one I revisit most. One listen will probably explain why.

Recommended tracks: ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’, ‘A National Acrobat’, ‘Spiral Architect’, ‘Sabbra Cadabra’