Howling loud and wild on his latest album The Wolves Are Coming, Welsh-born, Canadian-raised and Stateside-based guitarist Philip Sayce hits the ground running with opening number ‘Oh! That Bitches Brew’, ostensibly a tale of having his drink spiked at a party. With a sledgehammer riff attack that if you’ve only the experience of waking up with a bad hangover is a good enough starting point for you to understand where he’s coming from. It slides into that crazed-out funk rock squealing of the kind Lenny Kravitz and more recently Dan Patlansky have been making a noise with, and of course all began way back when Hendrix came over here in the 60s. Knocking back and forth with some heavy delivery, a potent skewered solo then gives way to a brief slow take on ‘Whole Lotta Love’s theremin middle-section to presumably approximate the dizzying effects of coming off the drug, before a final slam-dunk of that riff. Play this one loud next Sunday morning.

The loose, almost laid back, lo-fi approach of ‘Lady Love Divine’ is about as good a contrast you can come by, albeit there’s delightfully noisy drumming from Michael Leasure (who’s also served time with Walter Trout and Edgar Winter) throughout this greasy-funked almost southern rocker that acts as a worthy hair-of-the dog. Upbeat, good times and loving are delivered vocally in that one, while ‘Babylon Is Burning’ is a four-to-the-floor call-out in the Hendrix/Trower/Vaughn manner with a pointedly determined but too-brief solo.

Squirmy wah-wah-topped blues rock ‘Your Love’ is a break-up shout-out, with cool female backing harmonies, and that story’s reiterated on the creamy and tender blues ballad ‘It’s Over Now’. “It’s a personal journey and a diary,” Sayce said of The Wolves Are Coming. “These new songs and recordings became a lifeline to me during the pandemic and illustrate some of the highs and lows I have been navigating since releasing Spirit Rising in 2020. The Wolves Are Coming was created during the bleakest of times, not knowing if I would ever release these songs, or what being a musician and artist would look like moving forward.”

Thus, we can assume those last two numbers were personal matters, but business can get that way too, much as we try to act like it’s not, and that’s where a track like ‘Black Moon’ comes in. “A song about ruthless individuals that often pollute the music business,” said Sayce. “It’s about being tricked, violated, hurt, and manipulated but still holding on to my personal power and self-worth, and trusting that these fools will one day end up laying in the bed they’ve made.” It’s once more Leasure who stomps a footpath for Sayce to follow hacking away on his guitar, spitting out venomous threats one minute and following it with a cock-sure “Whoo-whoo” holler.

A while later, Sayce’s lunar fixation continues with ‘The Moon Is Full’; another loud and loose blues riffing number, it’s framework may be familiar to half-dozen or so similar songs you could name at the drop of the hat, but this is a guitarist who rarely holds back and there’s many a frenzied and inspired fuzzy-toned lick to excite this listener. A tad slower on the rhythmic beat (Sayce also plays bass by the way) is ‘Backstabber’ where the lyrics spell out Sayce’s feeling on the subject amid Hendrix-like bluesy riffs belting out amid a near garage rock wall of sound, a cool hook line and florid lead guitar lines that in the last minute take no prisoners as they scream their way to the song’s conclusion in a heady rush of biting sound.

‘Blackbirds Fly Alone’ comes as a release of tension, acoustic guitars, a little slide, some hazy-psychedelia glowing, in this reflective number, where in the second half assorted guitars solo arrive, crossing over each other, each displaying soaring melodic lyrical expression, stretching out towards a suitably satiated climax. Similarly, ‘Intuition’ is a contemplative number; an instrumental that suddenly revs up with aircraft take-off oomph in its last minute. That the record ends with fun-time ragtime acoustic ‘This Is Hip’ may help lower you blood pressure down back to normal, unless, like me, you enjoyed the album so much you think it deserves an instant replay.

• Reviewed by Paul H Birch.
• The Wolves Are Coming is released via the Atomic Gemini label and is available now (from here).
• Official Website

Track List:

1. Oh! That Bitches Brew
2. Lady Love Divine
3. Babylon Is Burning
4. Your Love
5. It’s Over Now
6. Black Moon
7. Blackbirds Fly Alone
8. The Moon Is Full
9. Backstabber
10. Intuition
11. This Is Hip