European
tour Pics:
Switzerland
Germany
France
Email
If you've got any pics or cuttings, get in touch!
LONDON GREYHOUND 1988
They waved goodbye to Pink Records, to their bassist and to the Idea label. Now they've said au revoir to a guitarist. Some bands just can't take a few hints.
Cut down to a four-piece The Wolfhounds are making a fresh assault upon the apathy and idleness of independents. They drag just one number from the vinyl vaults - a splendid' Rain Stops Play' - and having never been the sort to make things easy for themselves, they DEMAND our attention with a wealth of new material.
With frontman Dave Callahan forced into the dual duties of guitar and vocals the visual aggression is muted. He also needs a haircut. He looks like damon grant. And previous rabidity is quelled: where The wolfhounds once foamed venomously, they're now restricted to spittle-strewn anger, bitterness fueled by (yet) another step backwards.
When the guitar takes a breather propped up against the drum riser, it's almost like the old days. A quaking Callahan with lyric sheet in one hand and a jabbering microphone in the other. Drummer Frank is his usual thrashingly aloof self, and there's still their stage birthmark, the excruciatingly hunchbacked fret scratching.
If the newly baptised songs kill the euphoria, they certainly aren't The wolfhounds last rights. 'Useless second Cousin' is throbbingly discordant. And 'everybody' is almost anthemic with its melodic dissonance, is unequivocal proof that they can still magnificently, maliciously hold together.
An odd night in that they're usually either untouchable or dreadful, and here they were merely average.
SIMON
WILLIAMS
"The
Wolfhounds live are
based on a classic garage
rock sound with an acidic edge, a twist in the guitars"
NME
Photo:
Steve Drury
"The
first thing you
notice about them is their odd appearance..."
NME
"Big Noise, violent funk, jolly japes and bile".
LONDON GREYHOUND 1988
Twelve months on from my last Wolfies experience I find them sweating blood in an encouragingly well populated West London pub. The sting in their performance has been deadened slightly by a bewildering set from support band Dog Faced Hermans (like having pins and needles in your brain), but as the minutes tick by the energy rises, and with intensity levels starting to soar it all begins to seem so familiar: white hot, mutoid punk blues, complete with wah-wah pedal - masterly stuff.
Why aren't they famous? even the bar-staff have to take a break from their gossiping when Callahan ( a thorn in the side of fashion in a crap mauve shirt and sporting a redundant floppy wedge haircut) grasps his guitar - forcefully but with absolutely no butch phallic undertones - and leads his oddly competitive merry men into 'Son of Nothing', a recent caustic pop disc.
The lead guitarist hunches over his instrument like he wants to play it with his nose, picking out the most scrumptious licks and giving the thoughtfully frowning bassist a wall of sound off of which he promptly bounce the throatiest noted I've heard in months.
Big noise, violent funk, jolly japes and bile, those Wolfhounds go on growing.
Mr Spencer
________________________
What METAL
HAMMER had to say!
click to enlarge
And in the NME...
1986 - Sounds
