"This is Sabaton for shaggers." New Powerwolf album Wake Up The Wicked is epic, catchy and brilliantly daft - like all the best power metal should be

Powerwolf.

Power metal. The subgenre’s greatest bands bewitch listeners with sonic tapestries of battles, bravery and biceps. It’s life-affirming magick, more than just the soundtrack to noodle-armed youths pwning n00bs on Fortnite. This music thrives on oomph. It needs, in the words of soul icon Seal, fuckin’ wolves. Enter Powerwolf, an act for whom the word ‘subtlety’ is an affront. Across two decades and nine albums, the German five-piece have become the world’s leaders in clerical, obnoxiously horny, werewolf-themed power metal. We’re told it’s a crowded market.

Have they gone prog on their 10th album? Dropped a collab with Drake? Nah. They’ve done the Powerwolf thing, again. Swimming in the Sabaton/Manowar moat rather than their Maiden/Priest paddle-pool of yore, Bless ’Em With The Blade rips Wake Up The Wicked open by reducing Deicide’s career to one line: ‘Tear up the Bible!’ It’s bubonically catchy heavy metal built for outdoor stages, choirs squeezing through honking organs, tearaway leads and frontman Attila Dorn’s überhensch operatics.