The True Werwolf / Commander Agares – Fill Me with Your Love / Gauntlets Of Fire [Split]

In a long tradition of splitting EP’s, The True Werwolf returns with two new split 7” EP’s in the first month of 2024. The first one with As Sahar through the great German Narbentage Produktionen label and the second one being this split EP with Commander Agares, which makes this latest offering a full Finnish affair. But since you never know what to expect from The True Werwolf, each and every release offers the element of surprise, even if the project/band has already been around the early 00’s.

With ‘Fill Me With Your Love’ it is up to The True Werwolf to open this split EP and just as contrarian the title might sound, so is the music. Just in exactly the tradition we have come to expect from the band. After a noisy first minute and a half or so, the song starts with some harsh almost Ildjarnian riff and the trademark gurgling shrieks only to get back into the trademark quirkiness. This comes in the form of some electronic beats and further noisy elements. Still, this particular track is not nearly as “weird” or unorthodox as some of its earlier works. In fact, it comes as one of the band’s most organic songs in which the balance between the use of non-regular Black Metal instruments and rudiments and the down-right great and raw Black Metal riffing. ‘Fill Me With Your Love’ is just another example of the sheer brilliance of the mind of Werwolf, not that he had anything left to prove, but still…

The flipside is reserved for Commander Agares, whose work most likely will now be best known for the split releases he shared. Before this specific split 7” EP with The True Werwolf he shared a split LP with Graveland. Still, putting that aside, Commander Agares, whose sole godfather is also active as live guitarist for Vargrav (and used to hold the same position in Azaghal too), is offering an interesting piece of Black Metal himself. Opposed to The True Werwolf, his take on the genre is way more atmospheric and with distinct folky nature. ‘Gauntlets Of Fire’, the track presented here, follows a similar path like those tracks offered on the Graveland split LP. Still pretty raw but with a thick layer of moody keyboards humming along in the back, together blending into another piece of melodic and rather atmospheric Pagan-tinged Black Metal.