Wolverine Blues is one of the albums (Along with Believer‘s Sanity Obscure and Dimensions album) that got me into more “exteme” metal. In 1993 when it was released, I was 16 years old and already into metal bands like Megadeth, Metallica, Anthrax and all of the heavier alternative bands that were around at the time. But, that year I had started craving for something more to my music, something with a little more bite. I started by first getting the back catalogues of Megadeth and Metallica and then discovered Slayer. Slayer satisfied my craving somewhat, but I still wanted something heavier. In the small town where I lived, finding the more exteme releases was next to impossible as the stores only stocked major label releases.

One day, I stumbled across a copy of Metal Maniacs in the store and my eyes were opened to all sorts of extreme bands I had never heard of before: Death, Obituary, Deicide, Type O Negative, Broken Hope and Brtual Truth all looked back at me from inside those magazine pages. I memorized the names of these and other bands, and whenever I was in the city I went and looked to see if I could find any of their releases. Usually I turned up empty handed but occasionally I could find something from Metal Blade or Roadrunner.

Luckily, in around 1993, Columbia records got on the extreme metal bandwagon and picked up a whole slew of Earache records artists. Columbia had though that death metal was going to be the next big thing! Kind of funny to think about, but at one time record execs seriously thought that Barney and Napalm Death would be rockstars!

The Columbia deal was a boon for me as this meant I could finally get my paws on some of these extreme bands I had read about. The first one I got was, of course, Wolverine Blues.

Wolverine Blues is looked upon by some as Entombed‘s sell-out record, and by others as an absolute masterpiece that pioneered the death and roll genre.

For me, as an impressionable teenager who had never heard anything with growled vocals, Wolverine Blues was a masterpiece. The album opens with “Eyemaster” which basically starts with a solid groove before blasting full throttle into a thrashing number. This is then followed by the absolutely excellent “Rotten Soil” which has the great line “Can you feel it itch? Can you feel it so divine, when blood is pissing down your spine?”. Another lyrical highlight is the question “Who examines the doctors?” from the track “Hollowman” Other songs examine horror (Demon), hatred (Full of Hell, Contempt) and  religion (Heaven’s Die, Out of Hand).

The whole album is so damn good it is almost hard to put into words how much this album has meant to me. About the only complaint I have is that the album is so short, clocking in at only 35 minutes. Adding more to the album might have made it lose some of it’s luster, but who knows? Check it out if you never have and prepare to listen to one of the best album’s of all time.

 

Wolverine Blues Tracklisting:
1. Eyemaster
2. Rotten Soil
3. Wolverine Blues
4.  Demon
5. Contempt
6. Full of Hell
7.  Blood Song
8. Hollowman
9. Heaven’s Die
10. Out of Hand

On Wolverine Blues Entombed were:
Lars-Goran Petrov-Vocals
Nicke Andesson-Drums, Design, Artwork
Uffe Cederlund-Guitar, Tambourine
Lars Rosenberg-Bass
Alex Hellid-Bass

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