Well, there are bands in the world that like to lie upon old sonorities in Metal and Rock'n'Roll. There's no problem in doing that since you put your soul into what you're doing. This is precisely what we find on the musical work of the German quintet WOLFEN. It's very good, as their latest release "Rise of the Lycans" shows.

They play an aggressive form of the well-known Heavy/Power Metal in the German way, in the same vein of bands like RUNNING WILD and GRAVE DIGGER, but with a more modernized. The choruses are really catchy and melodic, with all the bands musical instruments doing a great job (except for the aggressive voices they use sometimes, because they aren't fitting on their music due these low tunes, as you'll hear on "Rebirth of the Regulators", but the clean ones are amazing). It's an album to hear and shake your goddamn heads!

On the sound quality, it's really good, with a good choice for instrumental tunes that fits in their songs (although they deserve more), and creating a very good balance between the aggressiveness, the weight and sound clarity, enough to be heard and understood, but to have that essential punch that Metal bands must have. As a special guest, Chris Boltendahl (of course you all know that he is GRAVE DIGGER's singer) appears on the vocals on "Timekeeper", to give a different taste to "Rise of the Lycans". The album has as its finest moments the excellent "Genetic Sleepers" with its contrast between silk melodies and some aggressiveness (and very good rhythmic work), the typical German Power Metal essence that can be heard on "Forgotten Dreams" (it bears a charming energy and very good guitar riffs), on the excellent musical arrangements that fills "Xenophobia" and "Science & Religion" (this one is inspiring, having an introspective atmosphere and, once more, very good guitars), on the accessible melodies that permeates "Timekeeper", and fine vocals on "New World Order".

It's a very good album, indeed, so we can say that "Rise of the Lycans" deserves to be heard for all Metal fans with good taste.