Review: 1349 – The Wolf and the King

1349 took their time: “The Wolf And The King” ends a five-year waiting time for the fans of the prolific norwegian black metal powerhouse. Acitve since the late 90s, 1349 stick to their chosen path and deliver (in the best sense) traditional norwegian black metal record.

In fact, “The Wolf And The King” continues the sonic assault of “The Infernal Pathway”. The band loves speed, which is no surprise when Frost hits the drums (and songs like “Inner Portal” show his tremendous skill), but manages to bring some groove parts into it (“The God Devourer”).

The band knows how to write a proper black metal records, that’s for sure. Between the mentioned “Inner Portal”, the solide “Shadow Point”, and the semi-thrasher “Ash Of Ashes”, band and record take no prisoners.

And yet I’m not in love with “The Wolf And The King”. It offers too much solid-yet-nearly-standard formula songs and couldn’t capture my attention. Plus the vocals of Ravn sound a bit weaker than expected.

It’s a solid album, but not the banger I expected it to be. Which is to say, the vinyl variants fall into the same category.