Powerwolf is getting to be real fuckin' frustrating, let me tell ya what. I can explain precisely what their biggest problem is right now, and it's obvious to everybody who has ever heard more than one song of theirs at this point. Clearly, their problem is that they sound too much like Running Wild and ergo you're always going to be thinking of a better band while listening to Powerwolf. Simple!
Alright it's actually a little bit more obvious than that (though I'm not wrong). The obvious problem is that they're milking their signature formula so hard that there are pretty much guaranteed to be no challenges or surprises on each subsequent album. Have you heard Lupus Dei? Well if so, you've heard The Sacrament of Sin. It starts with a maddeningly epic barnburner and album highlight ("Fire and Forgive"), there's a speedy Europower cliche-fest either in the back half or as the second track (it's the former this time, with the title track), it closes on a track with a parenthetical title and switches tempos between verse and chorus and stands as one of the most overtly singalong songs in an album full of singalong songs ("Fist by Fist (Sacrilize or Strike)"), there's a track sung in some non-English language ("Stossgebet"), there's a giant arena-rousing mid paced anthem guaranteed to be a hit single ("Demons are a Girl's Best Friend"), and every song interjects superfluous Latin and is guaranteed to say "Hallelujah" more often than Manowar says "metal". It's almost insulting how so many tiny details are completely identical for like the sixth album in a row now.
However, most readers should be shouting at their screen that I'm a dumbass hypocrite because most of my favorite metal bands do this exact same thing all the time. Gargoyle, Motorhead, and Running Wild (obviously one of the main influences on Powerwolf here) are notorious for reusing song/album/riff structures over and over again, and they're some of my favorite bands of all time. And well... yeah, you got me there. Bands that do this tend to wind up in a pretty familiar place with each album, with fans generally being devoted and not caring because their formula scratches a particular itch. Frankly, Powerwolf is no different. I like this niche they fill, and if I seem disappointed with The Sacrament of Sin, it's entirely because most of this album's sister songs on other albums are simply better, so what we're getting here are mostly reheated leftovers of previous ideas. Some of them work amazingly, "Fire and Forgive" continues their tradition of having incredibly bombastic and rousing openers, with this one being every bit as good as the openers on every previous album. "Fist by Fist" is by far the best closing track they've managed in a decade, specifically because it's the first one in forever to just get to the fucking point. "Venom of Venus" isn't quite as good as its counterpart on the previous album ("Army of the Night") but it's still a highlight here, and I'd say the title track is better than "Dead Boys Don't Cry" but doesn't hold a candle to "Secrets of the Sacristy" or "Dead Until Dark". I'd describe them further but they can all really just be summed up in one sentence. "This is the Gamma Ray soundalike" or "This is the stompy one" or whatever, they're all very shallow but they usually have enough style and flair to not matter.
The problem is simply that most of the songs here have been done better, which I know isn't fair but it's true. You can hear an improved version of "Demons are a Girl's Best Friend" by just listening to "We Drink Your Blood" or "Sacred and Wild" instead. You could rock out to "Killers with the Cross" or you could check out "Catholic in the Morning... Satanist at Night" or "When the Moon Shines Red" instead. About the only truly different songs here are "Incense and Iron" and "Where the Wild Wolves have Gone", the former for being a very oddly folky song with tons of bounce and great hooks, while the latter is just a full on ballad at every turn and it just pulls the fucking dragchute on the album's momentum when it shows up (it doesn't help that it's followed by "Stossgebet" which also succeeds in going absolutely fucking nowhere). Nobody listens to Powerwolf because they don't want to hear booming choirs and adrenaline pumping excitement.
The thematic elements integral to Powerwolf's image are still intact and still fine I suppose, but I find myself wishing they'd go more full out with it. It's starting to sound a bit like a half-hearted parody at this point with how often they invoke the random Latin choirs. I mean, they've always done that but it sounds so obligatory nowadays. Contrast even the best moments of The Sacrament of Sin with what they sounded like on Bible of the Beast and it's night and day with how much more inspired and energetic they were almost ten years ago. It feels like the curtain has been pulled back a bit and we can see that instead of the image of a decaying corpse-preacher standing behind a marble pulpit, belching sulfur while delivering fiery sermons amidst a backdrop of a black-cloaked choir of revenants perverting the outwardly Catholic themes, it's just five dorky dudes in costumes playing Disney metal with a dark theme. It's basically Sabaton with generally better songwriting, but it's stagnating to a point of noxiousness. Which is silly because I said this same thing about Preachers of the Night and then they turned around and followed it up with Blessed and Possessed, which was basically the exact same album but 10000x more entertaining. So who knows what the future holds at this point?
So to sum it up, basically it's a Powerwolf album. It's not one of their better ones despite there being some absolutely rousing bangers here with "Fire and Forgive", "Venom of Venus", "Incense and Iron", and "Fist by Fist". That's about it. They're on top of the world right now but they aren't really living up to their own hype anymore. There are good moments here and I'd say this is still worth listening to just to hear how great the good songs are, but they've done better, so it's hard to tell fans to rush out and grab it.
Two random points that I couldn't fit in the review proper but wanted to address anyway: 1) I love how fond Powerwolf is of cover songs. I honestly get a kick out of hearing them reinterpret classics that inspired them and I love the twist they put on it this time, with the bonus disc being full of other bands covering their classic songs. Most of them aren't that good (with the exceptions of Epica and Saltatio Mortis killing their tracks, and Kreator's blistering thrash interpretation of "Amen and Attack" is fucking nuts) but it's a nice gesture. 2) The main riff of "Nightside in Siberia" sounds exactly like Amon Amarth's "Pursuit of Vikings" and now you'll never un-notice it. You're welcome.
RATING: 67%
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