Wolf

In an era when metal never stopped mutating, but did so in narrow increments barely audible to humans unschooled in the art of experimental composition, Orebo, Sweden, the band Wolf have stuck stubbornly to trusty pre-thrash leather-jacket-full-of-zippers basics: Power anthems distinguishable as actual songs, with indelible ice-blue riffs and words about ominous objects in the sky, night stalkers, demon bells, monsters going bump in the night and "whiskey psycho hellions"-- all howled by Niklas Olsson in a screech tuneful enough for laymen to decipher. Olsson -- who also plays guitar, and seems to prefer the surname Stalvind -- has been the band's one constant. From 1995 through the mid-'00s, the rhythm section comprised bassist Mikael Goding and drummer Daniel Bergkvist, but Anders Modd and Richard Holmgren now man those chairs, with Johannes Losback on the second guitar, though some of Wolf's best albums (including 2004's definitive Evil Star) were recorded as a power trio.