It’s a welcome return to the fray for Sweden’s Wolverine, releasing their first new album since 2016’s Machina Viva, and first release since 2021’s Darkened Sky EP. They’re a prog/metal band who mostly create ‘mood’ music, heavy on the atmospherics, similar to bands like Anathema and Polish progmeisters Riverside. In the band’s lifespan, now around thirty one years, Anomalies will be only their sixth album release and, as they tour infrequently, unless they get their name ‘out there’ more often, it’s unlikely they’ll ever ascend from the position they currently occupy in the prog firmament.
Despite the ferocious sounding name, Wolverine, in the scheme of things, are relatively very tame in that what they perform is on the more mellow end of the spectrum. They have nothing like the power of a Dream Theater or the sonic atmosphere of a Porcupine Tree, and no frontman who stamps his personality on the music or the band. There isn’t too much in the way of catchy hooks either, as most tracks revolve around synth and mellotron excursions which produce spacey atmospheric pieces of music, such as ‘My Solitary Foe’, with its distinct evoking of Anathema, and ‘The World And All Its Dazzling Lights’.
Singer Stefan Zell claims not to have been ‘in a good place’ before this album came about and, if there’s a feel to the album, it’s the sense of getting older and having thoughts you might not have had when younger. Certainly, there’s an unremitting bleakness in some of the lyrical content. On opener, the very melodic ‘A Sudden Demise’, he states “I run from the darkness in search of the light.” Similarly, with ‘Nightfall’, the first track on which you’re aware of the guitar, he claims “I was not in a good place in life.”
But being on the more refined side isn’t to say there isn’t any prog power in what they play. On songs like ‘Losing Game’ and ‘Scarlet Tide’, when the guitar is to the forefront, the playing is restrained and melodic, with no manic displays of flash note shredding.
Overall, this album probably constitutes specialised niche listening. Anyone likely to buy it will already be an aficionado of prog/metal and, while it’s understandable how bands like Dream Theater can attract new listeners with a new album, I’m unsure whether this would apply here. This isn’t to say Anomalies is a bad album; it isn’t, far from it. The musicianship is good, the mood created is evocative and Stefan Zell is a fine vocalist, but I suspect this album will resonate only with those who’re already familiar with Wolverine, which is a pity as this band deserves to be much better known.
