WOLFMANGLER


WOLFMANGLER is the musical vision of D Smolken, a Polish political emigre,formerly of DEAD RAVEN CHOIR. His music is slow, grim, noisy and shambling, a deconstructed hybrid of twisted folk and hinterland doom metal. Bowed double bass, electric bass and violin merge with sinister growls and whispered lyrics as WOLFMANGLER improvise dissonant doom riffs around lyrics taken from Hank Wiilams Jr, Georg Trakl and others, rich with the symbolism of life and decay. WOLFMANGLER create a listening experience at once unsettling, twisted and darkly beautiful.

"I guess I shouldn't bother trying to clear this up, but I don't play cello nor has anybody else ever played cello on any of my albums." Says Smolken, from his forest lair, deep in Poland. "I do play the double bass/contrabass/bass fiddle/bull fiddle/whatever else you wanna call it. And just to add confusion, there is some cello banjo (a large banjo tuned like a cello - a great instrument though I sold it before moving to Poland) on the upcomiing "Selenoclast Wolves" CD and also on WOLFMANGLER's "My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Wolves" and "The Gates Of Wolves" CD-Rs. But that's definitely not a cello."

Aurora Boreal proudly presented "Protected by the Ejaculation of Wolves", a split CD with MOSS, limited to 500 pieces, in 2005.

June 2006 sees the release of "Dwelling in a Dead Raven for the Glory of Crucified Wolves", initially on CD, followed by a limited deluxe vinyl edition in late summer. This latest opus is Classically inspired as always: lyrics ranging from the ancient Spartan poet Tyrtaeus to H.P. Lovecraft and music ranging from the carcass of an old Frank Sinatra hit, gnawed and chewed, to WOLFMANGLER's own compositions. All the music was recorded live at 1502 Merry Orks in Texas, prior to Smolken's permanent return to Poland.

"Wolfmangler is another project from the Polish Moustache otherwise known as D Smolken, also of Garlic Yarg and Dead Raven Choir. The sludgefest follows the chamber doom quartet lineage of their previous releases, the bass/bass/double bass here being augmented by what sounds like a flute and maybe a French horn. And a big drum. The drum and flute give songs like "King Guthrum" an almost Korean court music feel, but the French horn pulls the soupy bass throb closer to Noggin The Nog territory. There's also a kind of Ray Harryhausen feel, something reminescent of the awakening of a plasticine dragon or the approach of clunkily animated skeletons holding swords, maybe one skelly has one of those spiky ball and chain thingies. 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

"Wild, ungainly mediaeval electric power-lurch from Smolken of Dead Raven Choir with a big band of three electric bassists, vocals, flute, bassoon, trombone and black, baroque atmospheres. Extended lead-shot barrages of singlenote melodies put to the service of arcing paeans to acrid smoke, horse's breath and heavy, alchemical metal. Every track sounds like a curse. A great sideways compliment to the Choir's forest of doom moves." - Volcanic Tongue

"The return of Wolfmangler, aka Smolken, who also just so happens to be the man behind Dead Raven Choir. Hot on the heels of a split with UK ultra doomlords Moss, Wolfmangler continue to explore the dark world of doom in their own truly peculiar manner. With bass, electric bass, drum, flute, trombone and bassoon (each band member is also credited with things like umber bulk, water nymph, floating eye, tengu, trapper and of course leprechaun) the Wolfmangler ensemble create a truly unique doom, woven together from wheezing woodwinds, throbbing low end, simple occasional drum beats and weird grumbled growly vocals. The result is not so much a massive doom sound as a creepy ancient court music, plodding and funereal. You can almost imagine some black clad procession trudging along the winding cobblestone streets within some walled fortress. Kerry though it sounded like punk rock slowed waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down. Texturally it's unlike anything we've ever heard. The closest reference might be Skepticism, the way it sounded like their music is being heard through the floor or from a building next door. Wolfmangler's sound has a similar timbre, a bit like some high school marching band dipped in tar and forced to march through a desert of black sand, or maybe like holding a stylus in one hand, and a scratched up 45 of Fleetwood Mac's tusk in the other, and trying to manually play the record by dragging the needle along each groove. Warbly and dizzyingly warped, Dwelling In A Dead Raven For The Glory Of Crucifed Wolves is some sort of hellish circus music, the soundtrack to a Fellini film, showed one frame at a time, a New Orleans Funeral Jazz band 78 played at 16 rpm on an old dusty victrola. So gorgeously slow, so pretty and creepy and dreamily doomy." - Aquarius Records

Wolfmangler: a drone like a fallen tree, rotting in a primeval forest in a wet autumn, so thick and mushy one can almost see mushrooms growing on it... Wolfmangler: a drone so heavy and slow it makes one drowsy, like polish plum brandy burning it's way through one veins and brain; a drone so slow it's decomposing, like a procession of mad lepers... Wolfmangler: a blackened improvised doom metal drone of double bass, two electric basses, flute, bassoon, trombone and the unintelligible mumbling of texts by Frank Sinatra, HP Lovecraft and Tyrtaeus; the sinister drone of a Pole called Smolken, of 'Dead Raven Choir' and 'Garlic Yarg' notoriety; a drone which sounds as if a Current 93 goose has been force fed a diet of slower, much slower Bathory, Burzum and Darkthrone to fatten it's liver until it is black and poisonous and unfit for consumption... Dwelling in a dead raven...: Mayhem's Dead kept a rotting raven in a plastic bag to "inhale the scent of death" before going on stage, and this music is like that smell, as if it was music made for smelling rather than for hearing, for groping one's way through a dead raven as large as a concert hall, a morbid maze for the glory of crucified wolves, fascinans ad tremendum... ...for the glory of crucified wolves: to attain the grade of Magus, Aleister Crowley captured a toad, baptized it as Jesus of Nazareth, arrested it and charged it with blasphemy and sedition and then crucified it. It was Crowley's ritual for a Dying God; at the same time it caused the elemental spirit of the slain reptile to serve him. Where the toad was Crowley's blasphemous metaphor for Christ, the wolf is Smolken's; and the elemental spirits of slain wolves serve him. Magnificent. - Valter (Surreal Blogspot).

As slow and brooding as compost with a grudge, Wolfmangler are the bridge between pure ritual and "death folk", a hybrid music whose best representatives are probably Austria's Cadaverous Condition. This band began as a black metal act way back when, but have, in recent times, brought forth a delightful acoustic side that no one could have been prepared for. Indeed, the only surviving black metal element in Cadaverous Condition's current performances is the Cookie Monster vocals of singer Wolfgang, whose delivery is performed with such a straight edge that it demands we take him entirely seriously. Once past the initial smirk of discomfort, we find ourselves a party to the hopes, fears and shattered dreams of a loathsome troll destined to live out his days under a haunted bridge awaiting the occasional victim, and singing to himself of how he dreads their piteous cries as he gnaws at their bones. - Julian Cope, The Guardian.

Listen to "Star Winds".

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