POWERWOLF - Mathew Greywolf

\r\nMetal Is Religion and the chief priests are Powerwolf. The German/Romanian act returns not In Blood Red this time but just in time to preach the Bible Of The Beast, their newest full length album set to be released on April 27th through Metal Blade Records.Given the chance we had an interesting chat with one of the Wolves, MATTHEW GREYWOLF - UNHOLY DISTORTION \r\n

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\r\nScroll down to download the audio of the interview\r\n

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\r\nMetalzone: This is Metalzone calling and on the other end of the line I have one of the wolves, Mathew. Hello Mathew, welcome in Metalzone.
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\r\nPowerwolf: Hi
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\r\nMetalzone: Let’s begin from your latest release, your third album, “Bible of the Beast”. Tell us a few things about that.
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\r\nPowerwolf: you wanted to know something about “Bible of the Beast” right?
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\r\nMetalzone: Well, we have already sworn on the “Bible of the Beast”, we love it! So tell us a few things about the backup story. How did it turn out and what brought you to the “Bible of the beast”?
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\r\nPowerwolf: well, what brought us to the “Bible of the Beast”? I don’t know… first of all we called the album “Bible of the Beast” because most of the lyrics in the album are hang up at stories in the Bible where the devil appears. You know, generally people think the Bible is a book about the good side of things, miracles and stuff, but if you take a close look at the Apocalypse or the Old Testament, you’ll see that there is a lot of dark and sinister stuff going on and this is where we hang up with the lyrics on most of the songs. So, I think it was already quite in the beginning of the songwriting for the album that we already had the title “Bible of the Beast” in mind, you know? Already during the songwriting it was clear that the album would be called “Bible of the Beast” so it was kind of a concept for us. With the artwork and everything we satyed close to this concept, we just love to do concept stuff…
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\r\nMetalzone: Do you consider yourselves a concept band? Because you dress in a specific manner plus your make-up - I can’t say it’s “corpse paint” but you’re definitely very theatrical, so would you say that you’re a concept band?
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\r\nPowerwolf: Definitely, yeah. I think that in the first rehearsal it was clear that the visual would be important for our concept as well... So what you called “corpse paint”…
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\r\nMetalzone: I don’t know how else to call it that’s why I’m using the word...
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\r\nPowerwolf: yes, I know. We don’t call it that ourselves,  
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\r\nMetalzone: It’s just make-up then?
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\r\nPowerwolf: Yes. It was a part of Powerwolf from the beginning on so we definitely are kind of a concept band. There’s the music, there’s the visual side, there’s the stage presentation and everything. It was very important from the beginning to us to adopt the whole concept. But I would have to mention that of course the music is the most important part of it. You know, sometimes people ask; “What’s more important” and of course, the music is more important. I always tell people that “if you listen to a Powerwolf CD, you don’t see the picture, you just listen to the music and so, the music is the most important thing about it”. But, we have the visual as well and I think it’s kind of special for the people because we want to give people more than just the music…
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\r\nMetalzone: I think it’s a unique combination.
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\r\nPowerwolf: Thank you! I don’t know if it’s unique, because a lot of bands do so. Consider dinosaurs like KISS or something; they always had the strong visual part and the show and everything combined with the music. So, it’s not really new what we do, but we don’t do it just to create something very special, we just want to give something extra to people, I think it’s quite important. If I go to a live show, I don’t want to see a band that is just standing on stage watching their own feet, I want to give people good entertainment. I think over the years it’s become a very important part of the band, for us it just feels natural that we use make-up and all the other visual stuff, because it just belongs to Powerwolf.
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\r\nMetalzone: Well, being an absolute fanatic of the band, I have to ask – I know you’ve probably been asked a thousand times before but – what made you come up with the concept of Powerwolf and what do Powerwolf really stand for?
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\r\nPowerwolf: Powerwolf stand for dark heavy metal. In know it’s very short, but it’s what we play. We play dark heavy metal and we visualize dark metal. How we came up with the concept? I don’t, I can’t really tell you, it was always there. You know, we were starting to write songs for our debut album, and basically it was Attila that pictured it, since he did music like opera stuff before, so he was used to going on stage with costumes and make-up and everything. So I think it was Attila that came up with the idea to use a strong visual aspect as well and we just liked the idea, and so things started to develop. In various Powerwolf shows we didn’t have the setup like we have it today, it just developed, but it just felt natural from the beginning on.
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\r\nMetalzone: Tell me, have you received any criticism on the way you come on stage? I mean, have there been people that said: “Oh! What do they think they are doing?” or “What kind of lyrics are these?” or maybe people that just mock you guys?
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\r\nPowerwolf: Of course!
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\r\nMetalzone: How do you respond to that?\r\n
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\r\nPowerwolf: We get a lot of criticism, but we get a lot of praise as well. You know, I love to just provoke reaction. The worst thing that could happen to a band like Powerwolf, is that everybody says; “Well, it’s nice”. There are two extremes, either you really love Powerwolf, or you can’t stand it at all. And on shows or reviews for albums, there’s definitely a lot of criticism because some people get into what we do and some people don’t get into it, which I can understand. It’s a “love it or hate it” thing. In Germany, a lot of people criticize us because of the way we dress and because of the make-up and everything and I think it would be easier for Powerwolf to become more successful in Germany if we didn’t have the visual thing, since in Germany people seem to have a lot of problems with strong visual presentations. But we don’t do this because we want to catch more attention, we just do it for ourselves, you know? It’s part of the concept and we just do it, and we don’t care if people like it or not. I think we really like this situation where people either love Powerwolf, or they hate Powerwolf.
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\r\nMetalzone: All passionate things are like this; you either love it or hate it.
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\r\nPowerwolf: Yes, exactly. If we would try to just provoke nice reaction from everybody, then we would be quite an uninteresting band, you know?
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\r\nMetalzone: I couldn’t agree with you more.
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\r\nPowerwolf: What we do, we do with a lot of passion and we do it without any compromise so it’s natural that there some people who don’t like it and there are people who like it.
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\r\nMetalzone: Tell me a little bit about the creative process. Do you create melodies and lyrics at the same time – do you establish them together? Or is it that you have the music already and later try to fit the lyrics into it?
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\r\nPowerwolf: We usually write it together. It’s hard to tell… especially for “Bible of the Beast” the starting point for every song we wrote was the title of the song. The first thing we did, is we collected song titles, so we had a big pool of song titles and we just sat together in the rehearsal room and read out the song titles together and the some titles just provoked somebody to just sing a kind of chorus line for the song. So for example; we had a song title like pentagon or pentagram and somebody was just like; “Hey! That’s a cool title!” so why not find a melody line to fit the title. So, first we start with the song title and then we write the chorus line, and if we really like the chorus line and we can still remember the chorus line a few weeks later, then we write the rest of the song.
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\r\nMetalzone: Tell me the about the reactions you had so far on “Bible of the Beast”.
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\r\nPowerwolf: well Europe reactions are really- really good, there are some really brilliant reviews here in Germany, but we of course have some negative reviews as well. I think it’s now more than ever that this album divides people into Powerwolf lovers or Powerwolf haters. Actually in some German magazine we got these negative and positive reviews at the same time. I think it’s quite interesting for the reader to see that, ok, there people who really love it and people who really hate it. Tis is very good, like I said before there is nothing worst for a band than just being a band that’s  just considered nice for everybody, you know?
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\r\nMetalzone: Would you consider “Bible of the Beast” as your best album so far?
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\r\nPowerwolf: No, I won’t tell you that. Every musician will tell you that the new album is the very best, I just say… I don’t know. It’s a good album, we really like it, I mean we wouldn’t have recorded this album if we weren’t convinced that it’s really – really good, but you should ask me this question in five years. Because this album is the new one, I am really into it, and I don’t know. I also love “Lupus Dei”, I love “Return in Bloodred”. I always compare albums to something like family pictures. “Lupus Dei” for example is what did in 2007; it’s just like looking at an old family picture – maybe you look silly in a 10-year old family picture, but this makes the family picture maybe even more interesting.
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\r\nMetalzone: I see what you mean. How about a favorite song? Are there any?
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\r\nPowerwolf: It’s very hard to choose, but I would say that my favorite is “Raise your Fist, Evangelist”. It’s a very typical Powerwolf song; it’s very powerful, and if I had just one song to play to somebody to tell him what the music on “Bible of the Beast” is like, I would play “Raise your Fist, Evangelist”. It’s the one song I think that fans really like, we played it live in two shows – I think two weeks ago – and the reactions were fantastic, and I am really happy about that.
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\r\nMetalzone: People always react passionately to your music, as we can see in the preview clips of the limited edition DVD. In WACKEN you played for a really warm audience…\r\n
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\r\nPowerwolf: Definitely. That made us really proud because in a big festival like WACKEN it’s hard to get enough people in front of your stage because there are four stages for three days and at the same time we played there was the Carcass reunion show on the main stage and the band that played before us played for an almost empty stage and when we came out with our introduction, the stage was packed and people were already singing along the band’s name and everything, so I think this was one of the moments we were really - really proud, you know? Because with “Lupus Dei” we played a lot of tours, we played a lot of festivals, and we worked quite hard, at least speaking for Germany and the WACKEN show was a moment that showed us that it was worth all the work and that we had really gathered quite a fanatic fan base in the meantime. It’s one of the reasons why we chose the WACKEN show for our bonus DVD, because it was some kind of really special moment for us.
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\r\nMetalzone: About “Bible of the Beast”, I read in the info that you used a choir of 25 people and that you recorded the church organ in a chapel in France. Is that really true?
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\r\nPowerwolf: Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?
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\r\nMetalzone: I don’t know, maybe marketing? Just tell me a few things about that, I’m just kidding. (laughs)
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\r\nPowerwolf: it might be, but no, it’s not marketing, it’s a fact. It was really two very special things for us to do. If you work with a real 25-piece choir it really brings shivers to the spine. It’s a very special moment if 25 people are singing your song, imagine that, it was really unbelievable! We got a chance to do that because Attila’s coach is professor at the conservatory he’s quite a Powerwolf fan in the meantime so we played some early demos of the new songs to him and he said; “You know, it would be great to have a choir in them” and he offered us that he would try to gather people at the conservatory for the project and well… he did! So we got a chance to work with a classical choir in the conservatory which was really special for us.
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\r\nMetalzone: And what about the chapel you invaded?
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\r\nPowerwolf: we did that for a second time, in “Lupus Dei” we already recorded some choir parts in an old chapel and this time it was just the organ parts we did there, and as you can imagine it is very hard for a metal band to get the permission to use a church. We spent a lot of time on the phone trying to convince people because every time they would ask us “What kind of music do you record?” and we would say “metal” and that was the end of the conversation, most of the time.
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\r\nMetalzone: I am sure about that. Imagine if they listened to songs like “Saint Satan’s Day”
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\r\nPowerwolf: yes you know, I think the people of the church we recorded the album at still don’t know what the title of the album was etc (laughs) and when we were recording there were some people watching us really close, making sure that we wouldn’t desecrate or destroy anything in the church. This is detail stuff but it was worth all the work, because once again imagine you are standing in the middle of a big empty church and a church organ is playing your songs, it’s really something magic. Maybe people wouldn’t recognize this on the final record, but this is a moment that is really important for us, it belongs to the whole thing, it’s one of those special moments during the production; things like recording in a church are things that are important to us – ourselves – you know?
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\r\nMetalzone: Staying on the subject, I would like to ask you if you have ever had any problems with the church.
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\r\nPowerwolf: Not yet. (laughs) but maybe there are some new more provoking stuff on the new album, so we will see… But so far there has not been any reaction from any church. We will see what happens…
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\r\nMetalzone: Do you think that in your live shows you can reproduce the atmosphere you produce in your albums?
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\r\nPowerwolf: Well, I don’t know to be honest. But I think in a live situation it’s much more important to make party with people. If you watch the clip form the WACKEN show you will see that it’s really about celebrating a big heavy metal party together with the audience. And of course, we have the organ, we have the choir stuff, but I think all of that is not really that important live. When you’re playing live it’s really important that the 5 people from the band which are on stage can deliver a passionate show and the people in front of the stage can realize that they are not just 5 musicians playing their stuff, they are 5 friends who really celebrate the passion for their music.
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\r\nMetalzone: you have some merchandise and it is quite obvious in your lyrics that you feel that metal is a religion, so do you feel like preachers of heavy metal?
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\r\nPowerwolf: (laughs) well, this was actually one of the son titles we didn’t write a song to. Even if it would be pathetic I would say, yes. Why not? We like catchy slogans, so why not “preachers of heavy metal”? Of course! We listen to this kind of music for so many years and it’s really like a religion, with a blink of an eye you can say metal is a religion. If you see real fans it’s very special. In the music scene there are so many superficial stuff while in the metal scene people are really – really dedicated to their music and they are really loyal to the scene, so it’s really kind of like a religious process. You can absolutely compare it to that.
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\r\nMetalzone: Well, what I usually say when I play one of your songs is; “In Powerwolf we trust”!
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\r\nPowerwolf: (laughs) that’s actually very good! You should create merchandise slogans for us.
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\r\nMetalzone: (laughs) Well actually, what I am meaning to do – besides converting people into Powerwolf fans – is to create a Powerwolf fan club in Greece, and along with Andreas we have come up with a name for it; “The Hellenic Wolf Warriors”…
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\r\nPowerwolf: Wow! That’s really good… Wow!
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\r\nMetalzone: And I wanted to ask you for your permission to create the fan club because there is a fan base building up for you here in Greece.
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\r\nPowerwolf: That would be really great! I would be really proud if you could do so. You’ve got the permission from “The Wolves” themselves to do that.
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\r\nMetalzone: Actually, we were thinking of a blood sacrifice or something like that but I wouldn’t know where to find a virgin, you know? (laughs)
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\r\nPowerwolf: Yes, they are very hard to find because they are all very slim, and there’s just not enough blood, you know?
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\r\nMetalzone: Yes, and we now have the “Bible” to swear on, so the only thing missing is the sacrifice.
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\r\nPowerwolf: Yes, but you can do your sacrifice with sacramental wine, you know? It’s much better.
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\r\nMetalzone: In the name of metal?
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\r\nPowerwolf: Yes! You should do so. (laughs)
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\r\nMetalzone: Tell me about your future plans, I know you have some festival shows booked, are you going to tour to support the “Bible”
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\r\nPowerwolf: I hope so, but so far there are no concrete plans which are already confirmed, I mean we have a lot of festival shows coming up, unfortunately most of them in Germany. We are actually trying to get some more festival shows outside of Germany, because you know for us it’s really special to play in countries we’ve never been before. Last week we played a show in Belgium with Hammerfall and it was the first show in Belgium and it was just fantastic to see that there are a lot of Powerwolf fans around there. So we have to play more shows outside of Germany. First of all we play a lot of festival shows during the summer and we really hope that we can play for you in the autumn tour, but this always depends on the possibilities we get offered, because it is quite likely that we will not play the headlining band outside of Germany if it comes to a full tour, and being a support band it’s always hard to choose a tour where you can really play because as you might have seen on the DVD we have a lot of stage set up and everything and it’s really important to us if we go on tour that we get the permission to use all of that because we really want the Powerwolf fans to see our full show. We are in different negotiations for touring but it is really important for us to make sure to get good conditions to play with a full stage show. We would rather play no tour than play half a Powerwolf show.
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\r\nMetalzone: I’d like to thank you very much for your time and for this interview. Closing I would like to say something I wrote in my review of your album; I feel that you’re the only band around at the moment that can produce such a feeling, because what you play, you play with a lot of guts and it reminds me of what heavy metal is all about. That’s why I absolutely love Powerwolf and I feel that you are true preachers of what heavy metal is.\r\n
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\r\nPowerwolf: Thanks a lot; it’s really one of the best compliments we got on the new album so far. This is what it’s all about. Heavy metal should be played with guts, it’s what heavy metal is about and there are people around who really understand what we do, so thanks a lot, that’s great!\r\n

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\r\nDownload the audio file of the interview HERE \r\n

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\r\nInterview : Hellena Mihailidou
\r\nTranscribing: Iro Kapeloni\r\n

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