Wolfpack Heading Nowhere is a new gothic metal band hailing from Poland. Their activity started with a signing with Piranha Music, and through there, two singles and their debut self-titled album were released. I've always viewed Poland as the host of some of the best black metal--I've never heard music of this vein come from the country. There's not much more background information about this young group, so without further ado, I'd like to see if this wolfpack heads somewhere... they can't wander forever, right?

They've certainly wandered into criticisms. Over at RateYourMusic, this record has a solid one point seven-fucking-five out of five-fucking-stars. Granted, that's the aggregate of only three raters, but over on the lead single's music video, released by their record label's YouTube, the Polish comments had both pretty positive and quite negative points to make, with some viewers calling "Over The Tide" excellent, a minority labelling the song "okay," and others shunning its genericness. Personally, I think the album's pretty solid. I can point out slight alternative metal influences in Res's vocals, which cover baritone singing to harsh gutturals and raspy fry screams, both of being well executed and fit each song well. For gothic metal, a handful of songs are instrumentally energetic and rocking. Possibly some regular ol' heavy metal aspects seeped through, because I had no issue grooving to any given track. "Die In an Ivy Barbed Wire" is an explosion of such, with blistering guitar solos and a nice, satisfying "BLEGH."

The gothic-forward tracks like "Endure," with a darker atmosphere and somber vocals, feel authentic to the genre. Over the thirty-minute runtime of this album, I kept on wondering why the hell it fell into such divisive hands. Maybe Poland isn't well-acclimated to gothic metal, and the average metalhead there sticks to their kvlt. Possibly it's a bias against a rising group? The instrumentation, and I'm talking about the non-gothic moments, feel quite Southern, actually. There's also a Moog synth in "Tiny Pieces," a New Yorkian instrument, acting as another comical nail in the coffin. Now that is a feasible reason for European skepticism. Whatever the reason may be, I'm disregarding it and gifting a nice score to Wolfpack Heading Nowhere. The music video I mentioned earlier? Both the song and the video are cool as hell! What's the deal, guys?!

Wolfpack Heading Nowhere is a promising Gdańsk group whose work, even though it was released the same day as I'm writing this, has seemingly fallen into the wrong hands. The plodding gothic tempos and admittedly questionable Southern style worked for me, and it'll probably work for you as well.