The not-very-mild-mannered chap behind this is Joke Lanz and he will be 50 next year.
Sounds like he’s 22 and rising furious.
Wolfli’s Nightmare is brutish, powered by the sort of simplistic emotional reasoning which makes your guts churn prior to crying. Pushy, nasty robot rhythms don’t so much take you away as take you out the back and give you a kicking.
Guitars, you say? Is that what they are? There’s other instruments in there. Doesn’t seem to matter what they are, the impact is that full-on.
The individual (that’s you and me), isolated outsider in what seems to be an insider’s world… the seduction of madness and need in an alienating, selfish world.
Although I despised concept albums in my youth, I realise now that this was because mostly they were crap. "Wolfli’s Nightmare" is as close to an impulsive, comprehensive splurk of honest emotion as you’ll ever hear, despite the fact that the songs have been worked on carefully. Lanz lives in Berlin these days, so you’ll understand that I use the word "songs" rather loosely, because they act as deep, visceral triggers. Each is raw, intense as Lanz varies his approach to us from whispers to outraged bellows, like strange pieces in an aural jigsaw. The overall picture we end up with is largely one of our own creation.
Take the line "Why are there so many messed-up families?", for example.
Wolfli’s Nightmare is metal for metal-heads who get bored with the extravagant posturing and fantastical crap; or Beethoven fans who feel like a bit of rough. By way of reference, Lanz has worked with Mosimann, Swans, Young Gods and Marilyn Manson (blimey) and New Order (bloody hell). If that hasn’t got your attention there’s really no hope. "Wolfli’s Nightmare" is what happens when we open a tin to discover … weakness, fear, maggots, the Grimm brothers…
The vinyl package includes a CD - but you can get the CD on its own and even the download is sufficient to unsettle. Outrage in its purest form.
