Rage and Fire – The Last Wolf Review

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Please, don’t get me wrong my dear child of the night. I do love Extreme Metal, but long gone are the days when bands had to feature vocalists that had to vary their voices. As my dear child of the night might remember, the Extreme Metal albums that I hailed the most were the ones with very varied vocals. Of course, guttural vocals have a very important role in Metal music but they are not the only existing. Vocalists with a refined voice as Rob Halford, Dio, Bruce Dickinson, to number only a few, were a kind of trade mark of Metal music back in the days. But not only, vocalists with very personal voices had their share as well as Saxon’s Biff Bifford, Accept’s Udo Dirskschnider, and the most personal of them, Ozzy Osborne did before. Rage and Fire’s Rick addresses me to all of them with his very personal singing. It’s not nostalgy or the longing for the good old times which I truely believe aren’t gone but are here now.

Here we present you the band that cherished this unfortable tradition. Rage and Fire were formed in 2021 by guitarist Mário Figueira and vocalist and bassist Rick who played together in Ravensire until the band broke up in 2020. By mid-2021, they had made a home recording of three songs and they released these as a demotape adding, for good measure, their cover of W.A.S.P.’s “I Wanna Be Somebody.” That was named “Demo 1986+35” because of the regrettable historical lateness of its actual creation, and it sold out very quickly. Rage and Fire caught the attention of the underground metal scene and recordings started for the debut full length under the title, “The Last Wolf.” The album was recorded in RAF Studios (vocals recorded in Rock ‘n’ Raw Studios), mixed by Vasco Machado and mastered by Paulao Vieira. The cover art is created by Victor Costa.

As a curious fact, the lyrics of “Black Wind” are inspired by Robert E. Howard’s novel “The Hour of the Dragon,” and the lyrics of “The Last Wolf” are directly adapted from Jorge Luis Borges’ poem “Un lobo.”

“The Last Wolf” pays a tribute to the good days of Old School Heavy Metal not only to its peculiar voices as I pointed out before. The album represents an ode to the best Metal music that was ever made – noty longing my dear child of the night. The melodic guitars of “Black Wind” are really something to be praised. By the way, the wolf is one more Metal music iconography. It represents, above other things, the power of the pack beyond the individuals in a relation to the power of the Metal crowd over the individual metalhead. Album tittle “The Last Wolf” is all about this with its unforgetable guitars and epic vocals. One more memorable album.

Rage and Fire “The Last Wolf” was released of June 23rd via No Remorse Records.

Track Listing:

  1. Rage and Fire
  2. 20th Century Man
  3. Shapeshifter
  4. The Summoning
  5. Tell The Tales (of Medusa)
  6. Ebb and Flow (Wax and Wane)
  7. Black Wind
  8. The Last Wolf

Watch “20th Century Man” official video here:

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