ALBUM REVIEW: Wolfmother – ‘Victorious’

Wolfmother Victorious

wolfmother victorious
Whether you love the new Wolfmother album Victorious or not, it’s hard to shake the notion that they are still an exceptional band. More to the point, they are still a group that knows how to sort out the wide-range of 70s rock influences, in order to come up with something that at least sounds like a fresh take on classic sounds.

Then again, fresh isn’t necessarily the same as original. If Victorious winds up being your first experience with the NSW-based hard rockers, it’s likely to be a good experience. If you find yourself constantly wishing Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath would have a baby, you should be pretty pleased with tracks like “Victorious” and “Eye of the Beholder.” However, if you have been keeping up with the band since their 2005 self-titled debut, you may start to feel a certain amount of frustration.

To be sure, Wolfmother proves that once again, the “old” sounds can pummel you like they’re brand-new threats all over again. Unfortunately, at the same time, the band seems to be moving further and further away from the substantial promise they displayed over a decade ago. In the end, when you can put out an album with unrelenting, wild tributes for the days of stadium shows like “The Love That You Give” (in which frontman Andrew Stockdale sounds so much like Ozzy, it’s a little disconcerting) and “The Simple Life”, you can only feel but so bad about your lot in life.

Yet Wolfmother still seems to be heading in a potentially disastrous direction. The potential to do something truly unique with the influences that drive the group is not to be found here. The excesses of over-production also rear an ugly, bloated head on more than one occasion. Despite being only thirty-five minutes, the production values that seek to make this album a galaxy unto itself occasionally makes the running time feel a good bit longer than that. This is particularly noticeable around the middle point, in which, once or twice, it becomes difficult to tell where one song ends, and the next one begins.

This isn’t meant to be as bad a review of Victorious as it must read. Through lineup changes and other tours through the chaos that destroys many a good band, Wolfmother endures. Stockdale deserves a great deal of credit for not only rolling with the punches, but for continuing to deliver good records. With Victorious, you have something that works and pleases more often than not.

However, if Stockdale can’t think of something to find a better balancing act between his unique ideas, and those iconic bands he loves so much, Wolfmother may find themselves in creative hell.

They will be dressed to the nines, but they won’t have anywhere to go beyond a bland, forgettable wilderness.

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