Looks like Wolfsbane are back then…
RTM has a long history with this band, We recently celebrated twenty years of gig going, but in the summer of 1991 I attended the opening of Tressines Youth Rock Club on a Saturday afternoon. As part of the afternoon’s festivities Wolfsbane did a signing session, after which they played a small set and in so doing became the first band I ever saw live. I still have my Howling Mad Shithead badge somewhere....
Before we get to welcome them back though, fellow Tamworth band Lost in Vegas are up. They are not bad by any stretch, but their metal lacks charisma and there is nothing especially memorable about them. A work in progress.
Obsessive Compulsive follow them. And even if their singer Kelli wasn’t wearing a Hole T shirt, hadn’t got bleached shoulder length hair and wasn’t wearing red lipstick it would still be hard to deny comparisons with Courtney Love. Everything about the Manchester band screams grunge and so by definition they don’t offer a great deal fresh and new to the party. Again they are far from being the worst band I have ever seen, but it’s hard to be enthused.
Wolfsbane singer Blaze Bayley is an odd character. Inconsistency is his one constant and two decades of following him and his career has taught me to expect anything. But even I wasn’t prepared for him coming on stage in a dressing gown and attempting to strip off during first song “Limo.”
If I am being honest I wasn’t prepared for this show to be brilliant either, given the patchy set they delivered when supporting Saxon in April. I was wrong. The Wulfrun show was just after the band had reformed after a near 17-year hiatus (Blaze’s late wife Debbie insisting they started talking again after their acrimonious split), six moths later this is a band at its peak with hunger and desire restored.
From the get go the evening is one of those rare and beautiful things. Old classics like “Black Lagoon.” “All Hells Breaking Loose at Little Kathy Wilson’s Place” and “Loco” roll back the years and allow for a nostalgic look back to lost youth, but it’s the staggering quality of the new material that hits home.
Five songs from the new modestly titled “Wolfsbane Saves The World” are aired and all sound like they could fit comfortably into the Wolfsbane set for years to come, “Smoke and Red Light” becoming a instant sing-a-long.
However it’s the last four tracks that really ram home just how good this band is “I Like It Hot” and “Manhunt” close things (the latter with a roadie in a wolf mask crowd surfing), before an encore of “Easy” and “Paint The Town Red” (Blaze hamming it up and, back in his dressing gown being coaxed back on.) and you do idly wonder just how it never happened for them in their youth.
The whole band looks re-invigorated. Jeff Hateley bouncing like he was still in The Jellys, Jase Edwards still the burly king of the riff and Steve Danger banging away behind the kit like the old days, and a grinning Blaze promises to be back next September.
If its half as good as this it will be a magnificentr evening.
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