review by: Roberto Martinelli

This album is very much in the same vein as The Blood of Two Wolves, except Smolken, the main lunatic behind this project, is performing everything. However, the pieces on this recording are not improvised. As a result, there is much more to listen to musically within each track. Added variety is supplied by including cello and electric guitars on top of the acoustic guitar, which provides the bulk of the music.

...But Inside They Are Ravening Wolves suffers inexplicably from the same problems that plague The Blood of Two Wolves, namely the vocals are way too low. The vocals themselves are more or less identical to the ones on The Blood...: goofily exaggerated Eastern European accented voice with random, roller coaster drama. Smolken is in fact a Polish national who came to the US in 1986, but I still can't help but think that the vocals are somehow put on.

And while moments of each song sound good in themselves, the redundancy and total lack of separation from song to song, added with the difficulty in hearing what Smolken is trying to say make things get old really fast. Come to think of it, this incarnation of Dead Raven Choir is in every conceivable way the poor man's version of Finnish folk/psychedelic group Kemialliset Ystävät (check out the reviews below). So if you either love Kemialliset even more than I do, then maybe spending a few bucks on the quiet version of Dead Raven Choir may give you some enjoyment as well, but tread carefully.