Wolfshead have released their self titled first album through Jawbreaker Records, out since 23 October on CD, vinyl and digital.
Eight songs: "Tyranny and The Hunter", "Ashen Fawn", "Wreathed in Fire", "Dust and Smoke", "Cold Wings of Steel", "Storm of Beasts", the title track and "Pervade the Pyres" to close, the longest of them at over eight minutes.
The titles tell you exactly what register this is, and that is the point. Traditional heavy metal played straight, with no modern production tricks and no apology for the subject matter, is a style that lives or dies on whether the riffs are good enough to carry the familiarity.
New Zealand is an unusual place for it. The country has a small extreme metal scene with a long memory and almost no infrastructure for anything that needs a touring circuit, so a band working in this style there is building an audience abroad before it has one at home. A physical release in three formats is a bet that the audience exists.