INTERVIEW: Wolf are back with heavy metal album ‘Shadowland’
Photo: Wolf’s new album is Shadowland. Image courtesy of the band / Provided by The Orchard with permission.
Niklas Stalvind, the vocalist, guitarist and overall creative force behind the heavy metal band Wolf, did not sit at home and do nothing during the pandemic. Quite the contrary. The Swedish rocker decided to put together some original songs and head into the recording studio with his newly revitalized band. The result is the album Shadowland, available now from Century Media.
“I thought I was writing for a solo project or something different than Wolf,” Stalvind said about the early days of the project. “I just wanted to create again, to write something, so I wrote the song ‘Shadowland’ and a couple more songs. … And all of a sudden we didn’t have a tour because of the pandemic, so we went home. And I showed the other guys the four songs I had written. They liked it, and I had realized this is good Wolf material actually. We started exactly one year ago to record it. It took a year to write the rest of the songs and record the whole thing and mix it and master it. It was a very easy ride for a Wolf album for me, the easiest Wolf album I have ever made, and I think the pandemic helped it.”
Joining Stalvind in this iteration of Wolf are Simon Johansson (guitar), Pontus Egberg (bass) and Johan Koleberg (drums), according to press notes. The guys got together at Johansson’s studio, and actually because so many bands needed to cancel their session, they were left alone to create, create, create.
“So we had the studio all to ourselves, so it was no problem at all,” he said. “It was actually easier. … When I started listening to all the songs and the demos that we made, I got some Black Flame vibe on this album. It could also be the spirit of the band. We had the same sort of fire that we had when we did The Black Flame, so it was the same energy. I felt something was connected to the older days. I think this album has a lot from the earlier Wolf albums and a lot of the later as well, so I think it’s a good mix of all that Wolf has been for these 25 years.”
Stalvind said it’s strange to say “25 years” out loud. In some ways, that anniversary, which technically occurred two years ago, sounds like a long time, while in other ways, it feels everything started only yesterday. He remembers back in the mid-1990s when he wanted to play heavy metal; it was a time period when not too many bands were going heavy with their sound. This was the era of emerging emo, dominating pop punk and the latter days of grunge.
“It has been a very bumpy road,” he said. “We never had a straight line of success. It’s been a lot of obstacles. We were young when we started the band, and now I’m approaching 50. So we had the buying a house, getting a family [stage of life]. We’ve done all that, and it’s not easy for everyone to be in a band. People have different careers, or they have decided to step out of the band because of life. I’m really thankful that there are still people that want to do this with me. I never thought about quitting.”
Stalvind first discovered heavy metal music when he was 11 years old in the mid-1980s. He had recently changed classes and met some new friends who turned out to be metalheads with long hair. They had a band, and the metal scene in Sweden was starting to take off.
“Metal was big in Sweden back then, and there were big concerts,” Stalvind said. “One of my first big concerts was Iron Maiden with W.A.S.P. supporting in 1986, and after that I was blown away. It was like, this is my life now. It was a great time.”
At first, Wolf was called Wolverine, but Stalvind said that everyone in Sweden couldn’t pronounce the word. “We decided we had to go with something more simple, and at that point, we really had written the first Wolf songs,” he said. “We felt like this is the music we’re going to play, and Wolf was more of a fitting name for that — very simple, straightforward energy, no apologies. It was just Wolf.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Wolf’s new album is Shadowland. Click here for more information.
