Pinebender's fourth full-length and second Lovitt Records release doesn't sound all that different from previous efforts to channel age-old guitar gods and
Dinosaur Jr., which is surprising given the band's ever-shifting lineup. Steve Howard, formerly drummer, now plays baritone guitar, and Dennis Stacer, background unknown, joined up to give the three-piece's drum kit a proper pounding. That makes it easy to pin the band's signature slow-death-by-guitar sound on sole original member, guitarist/vocalist Chris Hansen. Sounding ever more like the gravel-voiced
Gavin Rossdale, Hansen works through moods ranging from gloomy to spiteful to introspective, and that's just on the first 14-minute track. Where they can, irony and anger work through the amplifiers to pull listeners down to the gloomy place the blazing guitars so badly want to bust out of. But generally,
Working Nine to Wolf works on a single level: It's loud. It's slow. And it's deliciously heavy. ~ Tammy La Gorce