Interview: Wolf Down

Finally, as promised, here is the interview I did with an awesome upcoming band from Germany named "Wolf Down". After just a quick glance at their work, I immediately fell for their tunes and had a great desire to have a talk with them, so here is the fruit of our correspondence. Really friendly people doing something awesome, take a read and a listen, you won't regret it! 

1. Up front, thank you so much for taking your time to answer some questions for "Natures With No Plagues" blog. Please, introduce yourself and the rest of "Wolf Down".

Tommy: Hello, thanks for having us! My name is Tommy, I play guitar in "Wolf Down" together with Larissa, she is our singer, Sven is our drummer and Merlin plays the bass.

2. You are still a very young band, so I'm interested in hearing how did you all get together to start writing music.

Tommy: We started writing music together in April 2011. Larissa, Sven and Merlin had a band called "Sink Or Swim" together. This band called it quits about one and a half years before that and I had also just left a band. We knew each other from shows and knew, that the ethics of veganism and straight edge are very important to all of us. So we began talking about doing a band together promoting these ethics with a heavy and non-compromising sound and that's how it all started.

3. Why and how did you choose that particular name for the project? Does it have any special meaning for you or was it just cool to use?

Tommy: Yeah, sure, wolves are really cool animals! But to be honest, we really liked the meaning of "(to) wolf down" which menas, to eat hastily. In our opinion this reflects how most of the people do not pay any attention on what they eat and consume, where it comes from and how it is produced. So the name of the band directly displays our criticism about this behavior.

4. Thus far you have one release called "MMXI". Tell me something more about the album and some interesting details about the creation of it.

Tommy: It's actually the first 4 songs we ever wrote and recorded, so technically this is our demo. We recorded them even before we played our first show if I remember correctly. We are very happy how everything worked out and about the positive response we got for it!

5. You are all vegan and straight edge in the band. When and how did you first get in touch with these ideologies? What sparked the flame that took you down that path?

Tommy: It was about 7 years ago when I was searching people to do a new band with. So I knew this guy who I knew was a very good drummer, so we gave it a shot. We began talking and eventually I found out he was vegan. He was the first person I ever knew who was vegan. Sure, I knew some vegetarians but to be honest, until that point I always thought that this was some kind of thing hippies and mid-40s moms do to just feel better about themselves. Getting to know this person changed my life. I soon became very interested in how veganism works, what he eats and what else he is aware of. With his help I started thinking and informing myself about all the different aspects and organizations promoting a meat free living. To say the least, in my opinion not all of them are promoting it the right way but thats another thing. Se with his help and guidance the transition was very easy to me. Maybe I have to add that I never was a vegetarian, I went straight from omnivore to vegan.

Straight Edge is another thing. I had my first contacts with hardcore music and shows also about the time I became vegan and started the band mentioned above. By that time I already had stopped taking illegal and legal drugs which played a huge part in my teenage years. But I didn't consider myself straight edge because I just knew too little about it. With the time I spent within the scene I got to learn about all the positive aspects about it and now I am proud to call myself straight edge. You don't need a lable to abstain from drug use, but I believe that through this label it becomes more concrete and achievable especially for younger people. It gives everyone a feeling of affiliation which for some people is very important. By calling yourself straight edge you are promoting a clean, positive, liberated way of life. Of course there are some people misusing the straight edge for their elitist excluding "I'm better than you" bullshit, but thats not our idea of it. So you can feel save around us whilst drinking your beer ;)

6. Aside of through your band and obviously your diet, is there any other way that you support veganism? Some sort of activism or anything similar?

Tommy: Yes, sure, we try to show support for different organizations and actions as much as we can but we hope you understand that we don't want to go too much into detail about this!

7. Your lyrics critique the common "9 to 5" life style, so I'm interested in what do band members do for a living in their own time?

Tommy: We are trying to work our way around the system, but to be honest, this only works to some point. We have to pay rent and stuff, so we sadly have to make money somehow. Right now a couple of us are still studying, the other ones have to work.

8. Do you think that society as a whole can undergo a drastic change, especially now that riots and revolutions are flaming up all over the world?  In your opinion, can capitalism be smashed?

Sven: That drastic changes are possible is written in history, both, positive and emancipatory as well as negative, reactionary and destructive. That's why the unwritten future is like a scale with achievements and throwbacks. The uprisings all around the globe prove that society's are in turmoil. Even though there is no master plan "how to abolish capitalism once and for all" we have the impulse, the anger and the courage to provoke this systems collapse and to destroy and rebuild, because we surely know what we don't want and how it should not be. We have a dream which guides what we want and how a sustainable, liberated and emancipatory society could look like and be organised; self-governed based on non-violence, equality and solidarity. All actions against capitalism (as a whole, or it's excesses) and revolutionary struggles at all must be accompanied by actions for something (aka the utopia) because we create the new world already in the here and now. This also affects your own behavior! "The" revolution won't be a single event which will happen on day X and after it capitalism is history, no. The revolution is a developing process carried and impelled by it's proponents. That's why it is important to raise a network of united struggles worldwide. Cosmopolitical like the proposition - think global, act local.

9. Tell me something more about your local music scene and about Germany in general. Is there anything you specifically love or hate about it? 

Tommy: The music scene in Germany is really big. There are a lot of clubs where shows take place. It's sad, but most hardcore shows are taking place in clubs that are run with a commercial interest so the shows are mostly expensive. We don't have a lot of alternatives in our area, there are some, but without a commercial background it's mostly not possible to pay what booking agencies are asking for bigger bands nowadays. Touring in Germany is very nice because the standards are very high. You get mostly good food, don't have to worry about sleeping places and promoters keep their promises. I guess thats the main reasons that bands are touring Germany over and over again (despite the fact that the hardcore scene is huge). So here you have it. We love the food but hate the money aspects about it in some cases.

10. Are there any more xvx bands in your surrounding area with which you do shows or somehow collaborate?

Tommy: We don't know about any other xvx bands in our area, there is one in eastern Germany called "Barren". We recently played a show with them and they are really great.

11. It is known that some of you have been involved with the band "Sink or Swim". How much does the music writing process differ between these two bands?

Sven: The sound differs as "Wolf Down" is a way heavier than "Sink or Swim" was, but the writing process is pretty similar. The guitarist writes stuff on his own and shows it to the rest at rehearsals or we just jam together and see what comes out. Mostly it's like a puzzle as we sort out a few parts and replace them, in turn, a few fit into another song idea and that's the way it goes. It's not always that easy, maybe that's also the reason why we don't have so many songs yet, but it's important to us that everyone is satisfied or at least compromised with the result. The difference which exists is, that in "Wolf Down" only Larissa is writing lyrics which she feels more comfortable with when it comes to performing the songs. In "Sink or Swim" almost everyone in the band was involved in writing lyrics.

12. Aside of "Wolf Down" and the already mentioned "Sink or Swim", do band members have some other projects? 

Tommy: Yes, Merlin has a really great band called "Rocksofa". They kill it! Other than that, all of us played in other bands in the past. 

13. At this point, are there any special plans for the future of "Wolf Down"?

Tommy: We are leaving for our first trip to Sweden on July 5th and we are really excited about this! We will also be playing Fluff Fest this year which feels truly amazing because in my opinion it's the best place to be for a hardcore/punk (or really any kind of) band!

In August we will be touring the Balkan States for a little over 2 weeks with our friends in "Demonwomb" (check them out!) from Austria. On this tour we will play shows in Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Austria.We are really looking forward to this and to find out what the hc/punk scene is like over there! After this there will be a few single shows in Germany before we leave for the UK in mid-September.

As you can see, we have a lot of shows to come this year ;)

Besides all the shows of course we are overly excited how everyone will react on our new "Renegades" 7" which was released on June 16th.

14. Again, thank you so much for doing this interview! Any final message for the readers? 

Sven: Thank you even more for your interest and thanks to everyone out there for taking the time to read what we have to say! Now get off the internet! Stop mourning - take action.