Simply a beautiful musical experience.

Sparse, bleak, dark and haunting are all words that can be used to describe the music that inhabits the new album of Swedish progressive metal band Wolverine. Though you could also use the words enchanting, enthralling, captivating and mesmerising because this new album 'Communication Lost' is such a diverse musical beast, that it provokes strong, powerful emotions that run the gamut from melancholia to exuberance, when you listen to it. The songs on 'Communication Lost' you see, deal with the darker subjects of life and existence, such as death, war, capitalism, pain, loss, over consumption and global warming, so a happy sounding album this is not. All that said, I still found this recording to be one of the most elegantly constructed albums I have had the pleasure of hearing in quite some time.

Starting and ending the album with the tracks 'Downfall' and 'A Beginning', which I can only describe as spoken word poems, Wolverine begin to draw you into their dark, depressive, ethereal and magical world, where you encounter the likes of 'Into The Great Nothing' a track about the state of the music business today and it's downside, 'Poison Ivy' and 'Your Favourite War' where the band explore the pitfalls of love and broken relationships, the beautiful 'Embrace' where the lyrics of vocalist Stefan Zell tell the story of how his baby daughter was born with a heart defect and how she had to undergo life threatening surgery to correct it, and how the family learned to cope with the pain of that horrible situation. Happily baby Freya is now three and running all over the place. Then Wolverine throw a spanner into proceedings with the odd almost Depeche Mode like 'Pulse' which worms and burrows it's melodies into your head and lives there long after 'Communication Lost' has finished playing. Follow this with 'What Remains' a stunningly simple ballad that features just vocal, piano and a hauntingly melancholic cello refrain and you can hear the class oozing from the speakers. Leaving the best until last and on an album as strong as this one, that's saying something, the band close with the wonderful triumvirate of 'In Memory Of Me', 'In The Quiet Of Dawn' and title track 'Communication Lost'. Three songs where Wolverine continue to bathe the listener in a sombre sonic landscape, that makes you feel that you want to wander there forever, which is as big a compliment that I can give this stellar album. 

Summing up I would just like to say that whatever musical genre you like, be it prog rock, metal, AOR, melodic rock, power metal etc, you will find that on 'Communication Lost' there is something for just about everyone, and that this superb album will be with you for years to come, if you chose to buy it and give it the time it needs to grow, breathe and live with you. This review could have been just a few words long and it would have read; "Simply a beautiful musical experience".

Ian Johnson