Do you remember, or more likely perhaps own and enjoy, such timeless albums such as Rainbow’s Rising, Dio’s Holy Diver and Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell?
And do you know the common denominator between the three (clue…..RJD)?
If you do – then Sign of the Wolf is most certainly for you. The project is one out together by Fireworks Magazine’s Bruce Mee as a sort of homage to those classic albums with the ensemble cast of musicians mostly having played with Rainbow/Dio/Sabbath on those albums or having some other connection.
For example the marvellous Tony Carey on keyboards, Doug Aldrich (guitar) Vinny Appice (drums) together with the likes of Mark Mangold, Steve Mann and Steve Morris to name but a few more. The vocals being handled in some powerful style by Andrew Freeman.
Whilst Sign of the Wolf is an homage, it is not an album of covers – oh no. It is nine epic songs of thumping hard rockers which will take you back to the times when stuff like this was at the top of the tree with this album a fresh take on it.
As the saying goes: “they don’t make ‘em like this any more” – or rather they do here with Sign of the Wolf.
Guitars and keyboards blazing away, scorching solos, raging vocals, hooks aplenty, big atmospheric sound. Glorious, powerful classic, hard rock like it used to be.
What’s not to like about the distinctive Tony Carey spacey synth/keys intro to The Last Unicorn? It’ll instantly take you right back to Tarot Woman. Then wait until the song takes off with the thunderous riff, more keyboard/synth swirls and bursts and a smokin’ solo. The Wolf doth howl – and how.
Arbeit Macht Frei roars is as a raging hard rocker. Still Me a massive hard edged melodic rocker with the big infectious hook then Silent Killer and Murder at Midnight come along as a due of slightly slower burning, slightly moody offerings with bite.
More Carey synth/keyboard wizardry to the intro to Rage of Angels, which then develops in to a well paced mini-epic seven minutes of poise and power. Here’s the video:
Rainbow’s End is a song Rainbow could have slotted on to any of the Dio-era albums. Bouncing Betty brings about a slight drop in quality being somewhat cliched and rather generic. A forgivable outlier considering the quality of everything else here.
The title track sees things out in a most fine style with everything thrown at it.
With an album as good as this, I do hope Sign of the Wolf is not a one-off and that there may be more to come. Usual formats available.
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