WOLF

Filling hearts with metal

Swedish wolves are here to fill your hearts with metal. Heavy metal in its purest form. Forget about synthesizers, keyboards, loops, forget about flutes, birimbao, fucking jouhikko, violin and other wooden crap. After three years of waiting WOLF is back finally with the fifth album “Ravenous”, hungry for blood and ready to kick your arse. Thanx god (and Gerrit Mohr) band's axeman Johannes Losbäck was available for interviews, so I took the opportunity immediately and asked him some pretty direct questions...

-Hello! Hope that you are in good health and everything is going well. Your new album is coming out on February 20. Are you excited or rather a bit nervous? The album turned out OK so critics should treat you well...
Hi Darek. Is it OK? It turned out bloody awesome! We're very excited offcourse. New album and new challanges. Critics doesn't bother us, the fans are the real critics.

-What has the feedback for "Ravenous" album been so far? Has their (fans) reaction surpassed your expectations in some way?
Too early to say but the fans love the new songs and so far what we've heard is excellent.

-”Ravenous” is the fifth full length album of WOLF. How do you feel about that stuff, compared to your previous recordings? Don't tell me this is your best record by far (everyone had known it even before you started writing for) and describe this record in your very own words pleeeease...
We feel very satisfied. We've been writing on this album for a long time and what ended up on it is the best we ever done, offcourse. It's a genuin Wolf album with all the elements of a band thats hungry and out for blood. Ravenous, in other words... When you start writing for a new album you knda "leave the other behind" in a way and just focus on what you wanna achieve. We can't relate to the older stuff just yet since we need to get this one to sink in. As soon as we start touring this album we will get a feel again for the older stuff (which kick ass offcourse).

-To be honest, in my opinion „Ravenous” is a pretty damn good heavy metal album. It's not about progression, transgression, experimentation (very popular terms these days), bla bla bla. It's about fucking heaviness, boundless melodies, well though out structures, striking harmonies, classic arrangements and so on. It's another tribute to heavy metal at its best. Can you agree with this?
666% This is who we are. We dont compromise or sit down and think about it. We just DO it. Heavy Metal isn't anything new and we're not the band thats gonna give you a new style within the style. We're just here to fill your hearts with metal by writing and playing good heavy metal songs.

-But to be more serious, is traditional heavy metal music still a place for WOLF to progress and evolve as a band, or it's just your favorite music style that you have fun, playing? What are the most challenging aspects of your work?
The most challenging thing is to make a better album than the previous one. Sure, we can progress and evolve within our "frames" and thats what we do when playing better and writing better songs. We celebrate every moment of metal history while playing.

-Some people think that classic heavy metal is not a difficult music style to play and all you need is just to pick up some JUDAS PRIEST riffs, some Dickinson's vocal lines, mix them together and that's it- you have a song. But this is far from the truth and it's not soooo easy to come up with some cool ideas. This is definitely a very time- consuming process, a lot of blood, sweat and tears for all of you. Am I right?
Yes, people who say that are the ones that never got to play metal cause their mommy's told 'em not to.


-He he, you're absolutely right man! But in fact, in your music can be heard a lot of influences coming from the 80's, the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and such bands as IRON MAIDEN, SAXON and JUDAS PRIEST especially. Which bands most influenced you as a musician when you were growing up? What 3 classic heavy metal albums would you take with you on a desert island?
King Diamond - Them. Kiss - Creatures of the night. Heavy Load - Death or glory.

-Which bands would you say most influence you now?
There's sooooo many that it's impossible to mention.

-OK, so what do you think of all these new and modern metal trends and new bands arriving on the scene? How do you see a contemporary metal music scene compared to metal scene from the 90's and the 80's?
It's the same always; The good & honest bands will survive - the rest will fall.

-When you started with this band back in '95, metal music scene was dominated mainly by death metal bands. There was no place for newcomers in classic heavy metal genre at all. But over the next few years the situation has been changing for good... Now such bands as WOLF, DREAM EVIL, MACHINE MEN, GODIVA and some other representatives of classic heavy metal genre are going pretty strong. So, do you see WOLF in terms of being a band who helped open the doors for classic heavy metal bands who followed you?
Offcourse. There were already cracks in the door though...we just help to break it down.

-Can you tell me in a few words the first thing that comes to your mind when I mention the following album titles: „Wolf”, „Black Wings”, „Evil Star” and „The Black Flame”?
A must have for anyone who like to wake up their neighbours.

-Yeah, it works perfectly! Go back to your newest effort. The album features eleven songs. If you could pick one of the songs off the „Ravenous” album that sums you guys up perfectly, which one do you think it would be? Tough one, I know...
I'd say "Curse you Salem." It has everything a Wolf song should have and I love to listen to it.

-My favorite track from the album is definitely the title one. Jesus Christ, it sounds almost like an IRON MAIDEN rip-off! Listen to the vocal parts dude!
Who's Jesus Christ?

-A Jewish barber, haven't you heard about him really? OK, nevermind... "Ravenous" features a guest guitar solo by Hank Shermann (FORCE OF EVIL, MERCYFUL FATE) and guest vocals by Mark Boals (YNGWIE MALMSTEEN, ROYAL HUNT). How did you get in touch with them? What do you think about their contributions to this album? And how much did it cost?
I asked Hank if he'd like to guest and he really loved the idea. He did a killer lead on the title track and it really is an overwhelming feeling to have him on the same album as ourself's. The man influenced us is so many ways. Mark is one of Niklas favorite singers and also a friend of Roy Z so we wanted to lift the song "Love at first Bite" and came up with the idea to have him to guest as backing vocals. He did a fabulous job, offcourse, and we all think that song was great before he sang on it but afterwards it was AMAZING! We paid them 666 beers.

-The album was produced by none other than famous Roy Z. Holy shit! As far as I know he is one of the most expensive metal producers. Did you rob a bank or what?
He asked us if he could produce us and we made it happen. We did not rob a bank but we DID promise him that if we did, he'll get the cash.:-)

-In my opinion Roy is worth of every dollar he wants. He is a genius! No wonder that your new album sounds absolutely phenomenal! Was it a good experience for you guys to work with him? Looking back over the recording process now, is there anything you would have changed?
Thank you. We love the sound aswell. Working with a man with Roy's expertise aswell as Roy's personality was amazing. He brought a whole new experience in producing and making an album to Wolf. There's absolutly nothing we'd like to change...well...we'd like to have recorded 2 albums in a row since we had such a good time. He really brough out the be(a)st in us.