WOLFMANGLER "cooking with wolves" cd $13
Where there are wolves, there is the digger Smolken. Left for dead two years ago when he left the murderous heat of Central Texas for the place of his birth, Poland, WOLFMANGLER has now been recast in rusted iron for its latest incarnation. Once a revolving door of different lineups, WOLFMANGLER is now the sole brainchild of Smolken. One thing remains the same, however. This is still some of the grimmest, most desolate doom metal on the planet.

Following a split CD with Moss and a full-length release on UK metal institution, Aurora Borealis, "Cooking With Wolves" is Smolken's first WOLFMANGLER release in it's new Polish form. What he concocts barely qualifies as music. It's more like the sonic equivalent of the Black Death. Heavy bass riffs, pounded and beaten into tracts of molten lava, spew pure dissonance like venom from a forked tongue. It is music for the funeral of civilization, an epic dirge to finally burn out the fire of the sun.

WOLFMANGLER is a unique entity, creating music unlike anyone else. Somewhere between black metal forests and Eastern European folk lies this bizarre hybridization. "Cooking With Wolves" uses an arsenal of acoustic and electric basses, bent and bowed into a cohesive, battered doom-orchestra. Smolken combines traditionals and Cole Porter tracks with original compositions. Further, no guitars were used in the making of these recordings. It's what classical music would sound like in hell. Inside each aural molasses coccoon, Smolken's trademark growl pierces through the murk to lead everyone and everything through the mountains to the sacrifice. These songs are a complete experience, each one drawing more blood than the previous.

"Cooking With Wolves" is a slow-acting poison. These shattered, shambolic acoustic death folk romps are a thing of pristine grandeur, boiled into a bubbling black mess. I can think of no better way to march toward the gallows with rotting skulls in hand.

Packaged in beautifully silkscreened black-cardboard jackets.

tracklist:
I. All Of You (C. Porter)
II. Czerwony Pas (music traditional) (audio sample)
III. Ol' Man River (words by O. Hammerstein, music by J. Kern)
IV. Beata Z Albatrosa (J. Laskowski)
V. Compost With A Grudge (words by various music journalists, music by R.
Burns and W. Herman)
VI. Zegar (J.B. Mufka)
VII. Szwolezerowie (traditional)
VIII. Easy To Love (C.Porter)

IX. Uneasy Autumn Moan (words by Georg Trakl, music by WOLFMANGLER)
X. In The East (words by Georg Trakl, music by WOLFMANGLER)
XI. She Dances (words by Feral Farnsworth, music by TAINT MEAT)
XII. To A Modern Poet (words by G.K. Chesterton, music by Vasily Ivanovich
Agapkin)
XIII. To The Boy Elis (words by Georg Trakl, music by WOLFMANGLER)
XIV. French Vampire Carol (words by Feral Farnsworth, music by TAINT MEAT)

Tracks I-VIII recorded in Poland by D. Smolken
Tracks IX-XIV recorded in Texas by D. Smolken, K. Elgethun, T. Zephyr and M.
Rosin and originally released on The Gates Of Wolves CD-R EP
No guitars were used in the making of these recordings

More samples at the dead raven choir site and at WOLFMANGLER's myspace.

Praise for WOLFMANGLER's past works:

No no no, what you really gots to hear is the new WolfMANGLER, me dears. Released on the consistently great Aurora Borealis label, this stunningly-titled album DWELLING IN A DEAD RAVEN FOR THE GLORY OF CRUCIFIED WOLVES is as original as our blessed Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine, Waldteufel or Khanate, and is truly the sound of the re-heathenised north. Wolfmangler, I salute ye. Imagine if THE WICKER MAN had not been an absolute pile of Christian-informed what-your-auntie-thinks-pagans-do sub-sub-Hammer Horror, and had, instead, been visionary enough to allow us all to have glimpsed an imagined lifestyle of heathens on some remote northern isle. - Julian Cope, Address Drudion

If you could sonically render the effect of heavy rags being hypnotically stirred into a cauldron of molten pitch with a severed antler this is the sound you would get. All the while, Smolken hisses elegies, spits dirges and generally growls one off, rolling his R's like a proper movie baddy. Totally book. - Plan B Magazine