"I knelt towards Wacken."- An interview with Powerwolf

I take my cue from Steve Harris [of Iron Maiden], who once said, "Criticism is perfectly fine as long as it's constructive." But of course I prefer to read positive comments, such as we got for "Beast Of Gévaudan" and "Dancing With The Dead". Those were almost overwhelmingly good. Nevertheless, one should free oneself a bit from paying too much attention to external feedback. We write what for us is the art in Powerwolf and I think that's how we were able to again create a really powerful album with "Call Of The Wild“. In my opinion, music like this is bitterly necessary in these times.

"We definitely did not produce a progressive metal album."

How would you classify "Call Of The Wild" in comparison with its predecessors?

Every album in a band's discography is important to get to where they are. The previous record "Sacrament Of Sin" showed us that we can definitely expand our sound a bit, for example with ballads, Celtic sounds or regarding the dynamics in the songs. We have continued this, but of course we have also kept our trademarks. So if you like Powerwolf, you definitely won't be disappointed. But again, we've made adjustments in the details, like taking verses back a little bit so that the chorus hits harder. This is the level we’re operating at. To be clear, we definitely did not produce a progressive metal album. We are very happy to have created our very own sound and feel very comfortable with it. In my opinion, major changes only make sense if they take the song or the whole thing forward. To me, change for change’s sake doesn't make a good song.

You wrote the album last year. Did the focus on details have to do with the fact that you had a lot of time to polish the songs due to the pandemic?

It was a bit of a strange situation: we were planning to start songwriting in spring 2020 anyway, after our South American tour with Amon Amarth. We had to interrupt that prematurely, flew back from Mexico and first had to let everything that happened in the world sink in. In theory, we were still on schedule, after the very intense live cycle for "Sacrament Of Sin" we wanted to take the traditional break and then move on to the next album. For my part, I was still convinced for a long time that the summer festivals would take place. I was a bit naive. When it became clear what would actually happen and what that would mean for the entire music landscape, it was quite frightening. Then we thought to ourselves: "Now more than ever! We're going to tune out this pandemic and put even more power into the record." First of all, that was the only thing we could do, and secondly, I felt that our fans expected that from us. Or rather: what they deserved. We wanted to offer them a strong album instead of feeling sorry for ourselves. Of course, there were days when the news situation made that difficult, then we deliberately retreated into our Powerwolf cave.

So "Call Of The Wild" is not your "pandemic album"?

Exactly, we consciously wanted to keep that out. Nobody wants to hear about that anymore. We wanted to get out of this vale of tears and are happy to have this album ready to share it with the people. That's what we want to convey.

One could say you've stuck to your themes: Werewolves (in the broadest sense) and the church respectively religion, right?

Yes, you absolutely can. We've focused a bit more on werewolf mythologies this time around, and we've found that they‘re ultimately about faith, about religion, and the historical approach to it. That is exactly our theme. "Beast Of Gévaudan" is a classic in this regard. Not so much the "monster" itself, whether it was a wolf, a hyena or something else entirely, nobody really knows what was going on there in southern France in the 18th century. In any case, hundreds of people were killed, there were bite and scratch marks. The army was sent in, fear and terror spread, and at some point the clergy said, "Yes, behold, you sinners! You have lived only for this world instead of the hereafter and now God sends us the punishment!" Of course, this is what we are looking for. For my part, I would not like to have this explained scientifically in detail. Probably that would even be possible with this example if one investigates quite exactly. But the fascinating thing is to write and sing about something that happens in such a fantasy world. Fortunately, we don't run out of ideas. We've found that werewolf stories take place in Sweden, in the Irish tradition as we sing about in "Blood For Blood (Faoladh)", there's the classic Romanian "Varcolac" and a few more. It is especially nice that many fans share stories from their home countries with us. We put them in our "treasure chest" and take them out when we have the right song.

How do you approach the deeper research for song topics?

For me, religious history has always been exciting. I always found the subject rather creepy and not particularly celebratory, so I wanted to find out where it came from. So topics like the Crusades and whatever else took place and is taking place in that context, which is supposed to be about goodness itself. Matthew [Greywolf; guitarist] and Attila [Dorn; singer] have are interested in mythologies, so one thing leads to another. From there on, it's also a matter of doing research, not simply relying on legends. That would be too easy. You have to dig deeper, even deeper than Wikipedia, because otherwise you really get the most absurd stories. To me, a good text - whether it's for a song or a novel - has a certain well-founded basis. But I‘d also like tostress: You are allowed to simply sing along to our songs. You don't have to engage intensively with the lyrics. I'm not angry with anyone who ignores all the topics, just celebrates our music with us and shouts "Glaubenskraft!".

Good keyword. Said song has a quite serious background.

It absolutely does. We are not a band that expresses itself politically. As private individuals, of course, but not in our music. In this case - and it has to be said that the lyrics are very cynical - we were stunned by the way the Catholic Church dealt with the cases of abuse within its ranks. I recently spoke with a colleague from Canada who told me that it happened there, too. How all this is swept under the table, how investigations are not allowed, how official assessments are ignored, how victims de facto have to suffer twice, has left us so speechless that we felt compelled to address this. We deliberately chose the word "Glaubenskraft" [„power of belief“] for this because it has a certain ambiguity: on the one hand, the positive side for people who draw strength from their faith, but on the other hand, the idea of believing in something until it becomes its own truth. But even with this song, "Glaubenskraft" is something you can just scream along to at our concerts and at Bullhead City. I'm already looking forward to how people in other countries will pronounce it.

"And then I wiped the tears from my eye."

Of course, we also want to talk about concerts here. You had already explained that you had to cut short your last tour prematurely, since then you haven't been on stage. How did you deal with the fact that you couldn't play live?

For me personally, there was a defining moment. I was watching some YouTube videos of our concerts over a glass of wine. In the process, I came across a video from the audience during "Where The Wild Wolves Have Gone" at W:O:A 2019. I had seen from the stage how the cell phone cameras turned on and the lights came on. What I obviously have never seen before, is what that looks like from the audience‘s perspective with those big screens, the numerous lights, the people standing close together. This incredible energy that suddenly swept over this field! I'm almost bursting in tears again now just thinking about it. So I saw that on my Mac and thought, "Yo, keeping your distance is the order of the day!" But here we were all one, the metal world was united and all was well. That did make me very sentimental, I must confess. And then I wiped the tears from my eyes and said to myself, "Well. I can let myself down now, but I can also think positively and keep going, keep going, keep going. The time will come when we'll be on stage again, and it will be great." We‘ve all had moments like that, musicians as well as fans. So for me it was this video. Normally I grumble when people hold up their cell phones and film, but in this case I thought it was really cool.