All the Rage, Bad Brains, Caliban, Converge, Cro-Mags, Drowningman, Fugazi, Glassjaw, Inside Out, King Crimson, Lifetime, Living Sacrifice, Metallica, Minor Threat, Prayer for Cleansing, Quicksand, Refused, Samhain, The Bad Plus, The Descendents, The Dillinger Escape Plan (old stuff), The Mars Volta/At the Drive In, The Misfits, Tool, Trap Them, Undying and on and on and on......
To the Wolves - Death & the Company You Keep
Record Label: None
Release Date: November 5, 2007
By the time I’d read the track listing and saw “Robot Killers,” I was hooked.
Also, by the time I’d read the track listing, the CD was almost over. It’s an art to say what you’ve got to say in under 20 minutes, and it’s not always a pretty picture. For every Circle Jerks ingrained into our collective consciousness, there are also 40 or 50 forgettable basement bands playing the exact same chords, so it’s important when making the world’s shortest sets to get shit going immediately. If I knew how to do that myself, this review would already be over, and your life would be completely changed.
As Death & the Company You Keep churned on and I found myself 12 minutes older and all the wiser, I came to realize there’s a pretty specific reason why I was convulsing, and that would be the body-rattling tightness of To the Wolves’ sound. For every snare hit or cymbal ding, there’s a correspondingly rhythmic guitar chug so the result is a machine both intimidating and groovy. It boils down to great execution and articulation, and the listener just gets a sense right off the bat that this would be an awesome live band.
Even though highlighting moments from a 12 minute CD is kind of like cutting a stick of gum into pieces with a fork and knife, the closer “Rain Runs Red” has got to be mentioned for its intense energy, and just completely spastic introduction – that’s the kind of shit Meshugah would see in their nightmares. “BloodWings” – although the cheesiest title for a song outside of Avenged Sevenfold – stood the hair on the back of my neck just from the creepiness of its chord progression. You get my drift – the style is as frightening as it is heavy, and it sounds like it was created after ingesting lethal amounts of Jane Doe.
Lately, it’s not hard to get fed up with the metal scene, since the stream of phony bands seems to be pretty much limitless. There’s always another dollar or two to be rung out from the same songs in a different key (however far down the band feels like tuning), so you’ve got to really pay attention when you find a winner. And if it only takes 12 minutes to make me proclaim that you’ve come to ward off all the poser bands – you’re doing a pretty good job.
ATTENTION BANDS - Click here for high quality, afforbable studio time. (Everything you hear on our page was recorded here except the Demos of course those are homebrew.)
Making "heavy" music that is creative, challenging, heartfelt.
Well, this chick's fucking some dude in a car and then a zombie creeps up behind her and attacks her and she screams while blood spurts all over the dude. Pretty much the exact same thing happened to me at my junior prom, except without the chick or the zombie. There was definitely blood, though - and screaming. Lots of screaming.
that would be badass. Let me talk to the guys and I'll see what our summer/fall touring schedule is like and fo sho set some easet coast shit up with you dudes. mitch
Dan - boing boing and Klaus are huge fans of To the Wolves, so we're just as delighted. Thanks for the thanks - we're psyched about working with you guys! I just know we're gonna make Klaus a star...
Hey there. We've got 3 demo tracks up! They were recorded live at our last practice, but the quality isn't half bad. Let us know what you think! Hope you like it. Thanks.
PS. We need some shows. Help us out if you can. :D
That show SUCKED it hard. I haven't heard the demo's, I had to put in the add-on request with the music off cause my brother was sleeping. I am going to check them out this weekend, I am pretty jazzed about that. If you remember, bring a cd with you tonight and I'll buy it.
