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BIO | INTERVIEW
2007 - Matthew Greywolf about ‘Lupus Dei’
Hey Matthew! Your new album ‘Lupus Dei’ is soon to be released. What can you tell us about the result?
We love it more than a catholic believer loves the pope, haha... We spent almost half a year now working on this album and it feels damn great to have it out soon. I think we’ve really outdone ourselves this time. With god on the right hand and Satan on the left we went far beyond what we did on our debut album ‘Return In Bloodred’. ‘Lupus Dei’ is much more intense, more horror and more metal than the wolf has ever been before. And we added a lot of spiritualism to our music. We even recorded parts of the album in a chapel built in the 12th century to invoke a special atmosphere. We invited a classical church choir to sing on some songs, and Falk Maria finally realized his devilish idea to integrate a church organ in the sound of POWERWOLF, which makes our sound much more evil and passionate.
Your new album turned out to be full of hits. Was it your goal to create stuff that can easily be sung with when you play live?
Heavy metal is at its best when it’s catchy! In the end it’s always the songs that you can sing along which are remembered from any record and that says everything about it. Heavy metal is not about showing how much you learned to play your instrument or to show how many parts you can integrate in just one song... in the end it’s the song itself that’s important - and a good song demands a strong and catchy hookline! On most of the songs on ‘Lupus Dei’ we wrote the chorus line first, and we sang it along for some weeks - if we still had it in mind some weeks later without having played it in the meantime, then it was good enough, and we arranged the song arround it. If not we threw it away. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why the hooklines are that striking on the album. Oh, and not to forget the omnipresent church chorale influences on ‘Lupus Dei’ - church chorales also are quite catchy usually...
You managed to write songs that catchy on the one hand and very dark, epic and horror-esque on the other. How does it come to this two-faced songwriting style?
I don’t think it’s really two faced, but it’s true, there are two sides to a POWERWOLF song: There’s always that catchy metal element which makes the songs being really striking, and then there’s this typical horror movie atmosphere, which adds that certain wolf-feeling to it all. For us both of it is important. If a song is good but lacks a certain atmosphere, then its not a POWERWOLF song. The same goes for a song which features a great atmosphere, but the melody line is not strong enough, we threw away a lot of ideas during the songwriting process of ‘Lupus Dei’. We wanted to make sure to record only the best stuff we’re able to deliver. And by the grace of the lord almighty we did...
Your music is deeply rooted in 80ies metal. Can you please tell us your main influences?
We love stuff like MERCYFUL FATE, BLACK SABBATH and IRON MAIDEN. Bands that mixed metal with a certain horror feeling and image, just like the wolf does it now. For us Metal demands a horror image. I don’t see a point in all this happy metal stuff - come on - metal should be evil! But despite of that we’re not the kind of people who are stuck in the past. We listen to a lot of new stuff as well, and everything influences us in any way. In one of the studios we recorded the album an engineer even said he’d recognize some SYSTEM OF A DOWN influences.... well, anyway, if there’s one influence that comes to my mind listening to songs like 'Prayer In The Dark' or 'Saturday Satan', then it’s surely IRON MAIDEN, haha... but as soon as we wolves gather to write music together no external influence is of any meaning at all. Of course they are there subconsciously, but when composing the main influence is the atmosphere we create. By the way, we wrote most of the songs wearing our full stage outfits and makeup in rehearsal room to invoke the feeling we have going out on stage.
Your new CD is called ‘Lupus Dei’. What’s behind the title?
It’s Latin and means "wolf of god". Lyrically ‘Lupus Dei’ is a concept album about heavy metal and religion. The wolf himself is the protagonist, and he walks through hell and back on this album. Descending into the depths of purgatory in the introduction ‘Lupus Daemonis’ he loses belief, denies god and gets infiltrated by evil spirits. He witnesses the apocalypse rising ‘Prayer In The Dark’, believes in nothing but blood fever anymore (‘In Blood We Trust’) and is hunting for souls as the devil in disguise ‘Saturday Satan’. The last three songs of the album, which represent the holy trinity (father, son and holy ghost) the wolf finally sees the light and witnesses god in the final opus ‘Lupus Dei’.
There are a lot links to the holy bible in your lyrics. What do you want to express with that?
Metal and religion go together hand in hand. Just look at all these metal maniacs all over the world. Just look at us, or at yourself... Heavy metal is our religion, the albums of our fave bands are like the bible to people like us! That was the initial idea that made us write an album about the word of the bible and the spirit of heavy metal!
You already have a fan club called the Wolftribe. What can you tell us about it?
The wolftribe is a circle of brave souls who are deeply dedicated to the wolves’ mission. Founded by two girls from Germany who were at almost every show we have played in our career yet the tribe is growing and growing. For us it is a great way to communicate with our fans. For example, we had a fanclub meeting after our show at last year’s Bang Your Head festival, which really turned out to be a happening. There’s nothing better than celebrating good music together with a lot of people. We see ourselves as a part of the wolftribe. A lone wolf was lost ever since. That’s why wolves gather. And that’s what we do. It’s a good feeling to know a strong and steady growing tribe behind us, and we definitely know to cherish that we have such wonderful dedicated fans!
You toured Europe together with GAMMA RAY. It was your first tour at all. Any memorable moments to share with your fans?
Oh, a lot, haha… For example, we had this day off somewhere in the Spanish desert. Nothing to do all day except of getting drunk and totally wasted, which provoked the idea of shooting an amateur vampire movie with Attila as the Vampire and Falk as his prey. If we’d do a DVD one day, maybe we can reveal it, but it’s an adult movie then for sure, haha... Oh, and then there was that incident during a show in Portugal. Attila wanted to run on a balcony above the stage while singing and didn’t see a glass door in front of that balcony and crashed right into it... Quite SPINAL TAP I can tell you... Haha....
You have a festival appearance at the Summer Breeze festival coming up. What can the fans expect?
We’ve been there two years ago and it’s been great, even though the sun was rising instead of the moon. We howled in the early morning, but still it was a party. This year we will return in bloodred mission at night. Nothing can hold back a bunch of wolves at night! Expect a bloodred spiritual metal party going on there!
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