In pro wrestling, like a lot of things in life, the mark of ultimate success is fleeting. Once a wrestler gets to the top, the reign is often short-lived. The crash back down to the mat, both figuratively and literally, takes a painful emotional toll, and a supernatural possession can take hold as both the hero and the heel become hellbent on tasting victory once more.
That second rise to the top is chronicled in Salem Wolves’ thunderous new single “November.” The follow-up to May’s anthemic “So Desperate,” this blistering new track is the second offering from the Providence band’s forthcoming concept record, The Psychotron Speaks, which just released.
Where the towering previous single aligned Salem Wolves frontman Gray Bouchard’s unease and anxiety in the most personal of moments, the barnstorming “November” delivers the listener right into the fever dream narrative of the album, which finds Danny Morton Jr., a down-on-his luck ‘80s-era pro wrestler who would re-emerge as The Stranger in the long-gone Southland Wrestling Association (SWA). With a career on the brink of irrelevance, The Stranger taps into a mysterious power delivered from the Psychotron, an unknowable and unthinkable eldritch device capable of bending the world around it and creating distortion, both aural and psychological.
And here, through ferocious guitars, a smothering propulsion, and cruising sonic density of “November,” we see the scenes of pro wrestling lost to time play out right before our mind’s eye.
“‘November’ is a heel turn,” Bouchard admits. “It’s about that feeling of coming in hot after you’ve been away from the game for some time. It’s a heralded return – not necessarily ‘to form’, but as a means to remake yourself in bloody countenance. It’s about how time and circumstances, sometimes as simple as the changing of the seasons, can influence you and compel you to be harder, colder, and less trusting.”
Are you rocking with their latest single?
