Artist: The Deadly
Album: The Wolves Are Here Again
Label: Pluto Records
Tracks: 13
Length: 30:14

Review by: Mark Fisher

 

 

 

Philadelphia’s The Deadly is compromised of ex-members of Turmoil and Sound of Failure as well as vocalist Rich Lippold and bassist Steve Turtso. This is the bands first full length album as well as their first for Pluto Records (Horse the Band, Imperial, Life in Pictures).

 

I was expecting a strong hardcore influence here and was surprised that the influence isn’t more prevalent. This is a pretty metal album with some moments that lean towards old school hardcore and some moments that lean toward math rock. The band offers up some pretty big slabs of metal dynamite in “Fastest Animal”, “The Poor Kids”, and “Planetarium”. Most of the songs have some sort of sing along anthem quality to them that gets your blood pumping and that always hooks me.  Where this album is seriously hurt are the vocals. The vocals rank among the most one dimensional I have heard in recent years. Rich Lippold just basically screams all the time. He’s an alright screamer but it gets on your nerves after awhile because he’s not a guy you can listen to scream for half an hour straight. There are a few times that the vocals take a speaking approach and I’d bet it’s  an attempt to make the vocals less monotonous but it doesn’t last for long enough to take you to another place.

 

All in all there are some awesome songs on The Wolves Are Here Again and with a bit of versatility vocally these guys could be a force to be reckoned with. This album though will probably get lost in the booming metal market. I recommend checking out some songs samples before buying this one.