Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: 22. 1. 2021
Production: Wig Wam
Album length: 47.31 min
Genre: Melodic Rock / Glam Metal
Rating: 8.0/10
Wig Wam, the Norwegian rockers who kicked up a whole lot of dust on the scene in the early 2000s with their (back then) red-hot glam metal revival moves and earned themselves serious name recognition – they caught the first train of a revival in a genre that had been totally forgotten throughout the nineties – are back after a pretty long break with a new album carrying a “survivalist” title, “Never Say Die”. Wig Wam stood their ground. Or fell and picked themselves back up. Either way, they survived.
Two excellent albums, the debut with the genius title “667 Neighbour of the Beast” and its follow-up, RockLine’s 2006 pick “Wigwamaina”, carried the band on the legs and wings of enviable success. Above all, though, there was the song In My Dreams, which Wig Wam took to the Eurovision Song Contest in 2005 to represent Norway. That year Finland’s Lordi won, and the green light came on for a glam metal revival, especially one with as much schmaltz and make-up as possible. It stayed lit only briefly, but Wig Wam found themselves in the right place at the right time. So the band released their debut again. In a different version. Under a different name, “Hard To Be A Rock’n’Roller…In Kiev”, which also included In My Dreams.
Now, the third and fourth albums showed the band maturing, but they no longer overflowed with that gung-ho, arrogant, almost mildly naive and childlike drive where you dream that your enthusiasm can overpower and conquer everything. And so you brim with positivity, but at the same time quickly become vulnerable to wicked souls. Both still good albums, they spoke in a more down-to-earth voice and no longer served up the surplus testosterone of the first two – and after Wall Street (2012), when everyone had already forgotten about Wig Wam, the band miraculously rose again and decided to go for “immortality” with “Never Say Die”.
The maturing continues on it, and today’s Wig Wam are sonically and energetically closer to the likes of Eclipse than to their early days. In other words, they’ve flirted more intensely with the realms of melodic heavy metal and heavy rock. Ten vocal tracks, one instrumental and an (utterly unnecessary) intro make up the new record, which for the most part delights with the fact that Wig Wam have once again polished their craft to Scandinavian perfection, where the core is all about delivering memorable, instantly followable melodic hooks (charismatic choruses) – and that’s the main attraction of this album. At the same time, it has to be admitted that guitarist “Teeny” (real name: Trond Holter) has grown even more mature, so it’s worth paying attention to his guitar wizardry, the extra guitar bits and embellishments, and above all the guitar soloing, which is the real treat of “Never Say Die”.
With “Never Say Die”, given expectations and given their past output, Wig Wam have put out the most bristling and darkest album of their career. Even though some songs still come at you with cheeky titles and naughty lyrics (Dirty Little Secret, Hard Love), the phrasing echoes in the development of the vocal and lead melodies, still gratefully pompous, only this time the pomp is dressed in the character of a darker drama theater. The last track, Silver Lining, is one move too many, and luckily it’s parked at the tail end. Twenty-plus years ago, any band would have put a song like this on the B-side of some single, and only rarely on an album. Still, it’s a nice moment, showing the softer, subtler side of the vocal aura of singer Glam (real name: Åge Sten Nilsen), crowned especially in the outro by a fun tangle of guitar witchcraft. But over these particular six minutes, a song like this says nothing that would shake the earth’s axis, or at least lift one of your eyebrows ever so slightly. Add the instrumental Northbound, which confirms that Teeny grew up on the figure and work of Van Halen, and the one-minute intro, and the really interesting music that the (surviving) fans of the band waited nine years for comes to just 35 minutes.
Anyway. “Never Say Die” is an album that shows the band’s continued maturing, brings a shift into harder and darker waters of dramatized moods and into realms closer to melodic rock, and, most importantly, brings the band back among the living. Let’s hope that one day they’ll be back on concert stages too.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. The Second Crusade (Intro)
2. Never Say Die
3. Hypnotized
4. Shadows Of Eternity
5. Kilimanjaro
6. Where Does It Hurt
7. My Kaleidoscope Ark
8. Dirty Little Secret
9. Call Of The Wild
10. Northbound (Instrumental)
11. Hard Love
12. Silver Lining
Lineup:
Glam (Åge Sten Nilsen) – vocals
Teeny (Trond Holter) – guitar
Flash (Bernt Jansen) – bass guitar
Sporty (Øystein Andersen) – drums
