Lone Wolf The Devil And I (Bella Union)
3/5
By: Theo Krekis
I’m not a goth. I don’t have long hair. I don’t wear black on black. I wasn’t bullied at school. And my parents do love me. If anything I used to bully goths at school. Not proud of it, mind. But I’ve always enjoyed dark music.
With this in mind, I want to draw attention to Paul Marshall’s (or Lone Wolf’s) album. The Devil And I takes the listener through an intense forty five minutes of ten songs, which I can only presume were written whilst Mr. Paul ‘Lone Wolf’ Marshall was sitting in a cemetery, funeral parlour or hospice.
Now, like I said, I like my dark music. Music which is heartfelt. Thought provoking. Something which moves you. I may sound like a spiritual dreadlocked hippy who wears fingerless gloves preaching when I say that, but I’m hoping you understand. The thing is, Mr. Wolf may have over stepped the mark a little here.
Vultures, released in 2007 under Marshall’s own name, was a phenomenal record, one filled with haunting acoustic guitar riffs complimented with vocals, which if you were in a ‘clinically upset’ state of mind, may have sent you over the edge. Emo? Indefinitely.
The Devil And I just doesn’t do it for me like Vultures did. After listening to this latest record, I can only imagine Paul is quite a shady character, not the shady character who writes poetry in his own blood whilst sitting in a blacked out room, but perhaps the shady character who writes poetry with a pen in a room lit with candles. Yes, that seems more fitting.
The thing with The Devil And I is that you really do feel like you’re on your last legs when you’re listening to it. There are very few tracks which are reminiscent of the sound which was predominant in Vultures, like that of ‘Russian Winter’, but with offerings like ‘The Devil and I (Part 1)’, you’re thrown into a dark and sinister place, where clawing at your own eyeballs would be acceptable social practice.
Paul Marshall fans. Beware. This album is intense. Not to be played at weddings or birthdays.
Artists in this article: Lone Wolf
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