“Uncompromising, Unending Death Metal…To keep on smashing you all endlessly with Death Metal until we bleed!”
In their seemingly short life span, Werewolves, without question, have made an atomic-sized impact on the world of extreme blasting death metal.
This trio comprising Matt Wilcock (guitars), Sam Bean (vocals & bass) and Dave Haley (drums) are manufacturing some of the finest uncompromising, unfiltered and extreme musical hate. Surely this ability to be so creative has a lifespan, or at the very least cause them to run out of ideas.
But with five releases since Werewolves birth in 2019 – all of which are crushingly brilliant – they show no signs of slowing their barrage of brutal flesh-ripping carnage.
They have just released album number four titled My Enemies Look And Sound Like Me so the first thing I asked Matt was to broach this topic of his musical thought process and unending stream of creativity.
Does he want to just smother the entire world in brutal death metal?
“Maybe that’s the answer to that!” he replied. “Both me and Sam, we’ve both been doing this for so long, and I think one of the (things you realise) is that when you grow and when it happens you latch onto it. When you’ve got the opportunity and a team of people who can actually create, work and get things done you’ve just gotta fucking go with it because the clock keeps ticking, and the world keeps turning. If you don’t fucking do it this year it won’t happen. Just get the fucking job done…make it happen!”
“If I’m gonna write an album then I’m gonna sit down, and I’m gonna do it.”
Matt expands on his creative artistic ethos as opposed to others by matter-of-factly saying “…that’s just the mindset and so many people don’t have that mindset; they don’t have that drive and not many people necessarily have that ability either. So when you’re lucky enough to surround yourself with a few like-minded savages – and this is in every area of life as well not just fucking death metal or not just music, anything! – when you’ve got that opportunity to get shit done then you’ve gotta fucking do it!”
Sam chimes in to expand on Matt’s theories – “I’m behind what Matt was saying, you’d know this as well, we start getting around this vintage, and you see that life can turn out a little bit fucking horrific just randomly for people, so very much when you got the opportunity to just get after it, you fucking go for it because you don’t know what’s coming around the corner!”
Sage words indeed from two of this country’s influential and creative extreme music artists.
Reflecting back on Matt’s comment of how rare it is to find another collaborative artist to have both faith and trust in one another’s ability to “just get” what it is they do, I asked him to further explain his thoughts regarding how important it is both to writing and creating death metal.
“It’s a rarity. It’s hard, and it’s a good thing,” he measured. “I think all the bands I’ve been in since being a fucking teenager, there’s always been issues with people. I’m not saying that in an overly negative way, I’m just saying that people are different and that people have different goals and also people change over time. None of my experiences are necessarily negative with people or in bands, it’s just the way that it is!”
Concluding his feelings Matt says, “…for us who are all the same sort of age, everyone’s a grown-up with a mortgage… I think given where we all are (collectively Werewolves as a band) in life and the fact that we all just fucking love and wanna make death metal, the fact that we’re all in the same mindset of wanting to do that and do it well. And do some of the other things that go along with that, be it touring, playing shows…the fact that we’re all somewhat on the same page and all heading in the same direction, it’s a rarity.”
On Sam’s motivations for being both a brutal death metal c#@t 110% of the time and how he’s influenced musically he tells us, “…quite often when it comes to lyrics, I’m a magpie it’s my day-to-day life. Someone will say something out of context or whatever, and I’ll say ‘Oh that’d make good lyrics in a song’ and it quickly gets scrawled down. So the death metal part is always constant even if you don’t have the time to sit still and rehearse or write, because adult life gets in the way. But shit man, I didn’t choose the death metal life, it chose me!”
We all laugh at those apt words to which Matt elaborates, “One thing that’s probably changed with me is that over the last few years, or since the Werewolves lifespan so far, I’ve become more passionate about brutal music than I was prior to that, even though I have always liked it, but now if I go to the gym, without fail I’m listening to death metal and it helps push. It’s so ingrained in what I do now, writing these riffs comes easy and probably more so just through what we’ve achieved as a band over the last few years it’s cemented itself in with my personality and my spiritual being!”
Sam gives his overall summation of the new Werewolves album simply seeing it as – “It’s (My Enemies Look And Sound Like Me) a clear regression from From The Cave To The Grave…it’s less pretence to being music and entertainment, it’s more just sheer raw, unadulterated, unseasoned violence. Before it was like putting on the sparkly lights and a soundtrack, getting hit with a baseball bat. It’s stripped back to just the baseball bat now.”
Consider what you’re about to read or listen to as less of an interview or promo chat following an album’s release and more of a fireside chat with three mates talking about their absolute passion in being as brutal, upfront, honest and artistically violent as society allows.
Werewolves new album My Enemies Look And Sound Like Me is out now courtesy of Prosthetic Records, and they are supporting the incredible Archspire and Ingested for the Tech Trek tour around Australia this October.
All tix and social details below:
https://werewolvesdeathmetal.bandcamp.com/album/my-enemies-look-and-sound-like-me
