The Greatest Professional Wrestling Concept Album EVER: Track By Track

Killer Lyrics: Some snivelling local babyface with an angle he can’t sell / Full werewolf off the buckle like an angel straight from hell.

A pace-y track that is reminiscent of punk, though with tighter instrumentals. The angry and sinister vocal delivery recalls the best heels on the mic, given even more ferocity by Jon Wurster’s drum work.

The first-person narrator is enveloped in his werewolf themed heel character – a wrestler living his gimmick in an era when kayfabe was still flourishing. He has become arrogant, unprofessional, and feral. The narrator is intent on making his opponent, and the rest of the locker room, genuinely afraid of him. He is warned by a promoter backstage to dial his act down but is unable to. The Wolf Man (based loosely on the 1941 movie of the same name) is only in it for the violence, his opponents are “nameless bodies”, and he ignores the fan’s outstretched hands.

Darnielle discussed wrestlers living the gimmick, he opined:

“You gotta own it. The best ones — Hulk Hogan believes in Hulkamania. It’s not a thing he’s selling here. It’s real. He knows it’s real because he goes to the Mall of America and everybody goes insane, right? Wrestling is real. Those characters are real. The werewolf is real. He would kill everybody if he could. All my dudes believe in themselves on the record.”