Indie Spotlight - The Wolfnote - Sacred Bodies

I played a show with The Wolfnote a long time ago at the One World Cafe before it burned down. They were such a tight, erratic, exciting band to see at that point in my life, as I was just starting to get into playing shows. As a young drummer, watching Garret Kruger play drums was a complete lesson in intensity and endurance.

Ever see someone play drums and they just put so much into their playing that it looks like their about to pass out two songs in, and they maintain that look for a whole set? That takes skill. Kruger not only kept the energy up the whole time, but he played hard, fast and tight, never faltering. Drummers can often pull off that much energy live, but it's hard to make that carry across into recording. The playing on Sacred Bodies is a direct representation, and gives off the same erratic and focused vibe.

At the end of Rats Is Life Garrett keeps his kick drum pumping while bashing the shit out of everything else, and as it goes on forever he never loses track. By the time everything starts slowing and sludging down, he's on top of everything, keeping a lid on the madness. Holy Blood has some great correlation between the bass and drums, every chord change, every shift is caught and accented, with out making things feel jagged. Liars In Love is a great dance-punk anthem, and the way the drums play off the vocal add to the feel quite a bit. My favorite has to be I Wanna Be Your Matador, its straight up punk, tightened up by Garretts quick shots, and it's a fist pumping good time.

I sure hope The Wolfnote are hiding somewhere in a cave, rehearsing and recording and gearing up for another run out East. I'm not going to hold my breath though, something tells me that's not going to happen.

I couldn't find any live footage of songs from this album, but here is some from 2 years before it's release.