There are some bands where the phrase “live album” feels almost inadequate. Powerwolf are absolutely one of them.
“Wildlive (Live At Olympiahalle)” was recorded at Munich’s Olympiahalle on the final night of the Wolfsnächte Tour 2024, and if the point of a concert record is to make you wish you had been there, then job done. Frankly, by the end of it you might feel as though you need to go to confession.
Because this is not just metal. Not really. This is spectacle. This is theatre. This is a heavy metal mass, with fire, organ, chanting, operetta, melodrama and enough crowd noise to suggest that Munich was not so much watching a gig as being inducted into something.
The opening “Intro – Monumental Mass Theme” sets the tone, but it is “Bless ’em With The Blade” that comes galloping out of the traps, and from there the momentum never really goes away. “Incense & Iron” soars, “Army Of The Night” sounds huge, and “Sinners Of The Seven Seas” is turbocharged in exactly the way Powerwolf do best.
And that is the thing here. This is proudly overblown. Indeed, this is the type of metal that people who do not like metal think metal sounds like: fists up, thunderous, vaguely ridiculous, vaguely operatic, and absolutely convinced of its own glory. The difference is that Powerwolf are exceptional at it.
“Amen & Attack” sounds like a stadium chanting in unison, “Dancing With The Dead” keeps the drama high, and by the time “Armata Strigoi” arrives, the whole thing has become less a setlist and more a ceremony. “1589” is ready for battle, complete with the sort of dark theatricality that makes perfect sense in this world, while “Demons Are A Girl’s Best Friend” underlines how effortlessly they can turn gothic nonsense into communal joy.
There is menace too. “Stossgebet” has a deeper, darker edge, before “Fire & Forgive” returns to the swagger and spectacle, the shock and awe. “We Don’t Wanna Be No Saints” takes things down a different route with children’s backing vocals, which should not work nearly as well as it does, and “Alive Or Undead” passes for a ballad in this company. Naturally, “Heretic Hunters” reverts to type soon enough.
What is striking, though, is how much this lives and dies by its backing vocals. Not because Attila Dorn needs help — he does not — but because the whole Powerwolf experience is built on response, ritual and release. Falk Maria Schlegel’s organ work is central to that, while Charles Greywolf, Matthew Greywolf and Roel van Helden provide the power beneath all the pageantry.
“Blood For Blood (Faoladh)” is suitably rollicking enough to get them towards the encores, and when they come back with “Sanctified With Dynamite”, they crush. “We Drink Your Blood” is the chant, the moment, the communion. Then “Werewolves Of Armenia” may well be the best moment of the lot.
“Wildlive” captures Powerwolf as they are now: ridiculous, brilliant, massive and utterly committed. If metal is a religion, they are preaching to the converted — and the congregation sounds enormous.
Rating 8/10
