Just like clockwork, Werewolves are back to kick the sonic shit out of you. Since 2020, Australian death metallers Werewolves have been releasing annual records of complete aural devastation. If you’ve been along for the ride with everyone’s favorite lupine group, you should know what to expect out of album number five. Die for Us, like the band’s previous four releases, wastes absolutely no time pummeling you over the head with the classic death metal sound that Werewolves have honed since 2020’s classic (and one of, like, three good things to come out of that wretched year) The Dead Are Screaming.
On July 12, Die for Us arrives in whatever format you prefer your beatdown. Expect nothing less than absolute devastation and no quarter given to idiocy. I’m of the mind that Werewolves have never released anything less than an absolute banger of a record (cards on the table, they’re my favorite modern death metal band) and Die for Us might just sit itself high up in the pack. If you’re itching to leave the human flesh behind and run with the wolves under the moon, read on to hear what vocalist/bassist Sam Bean has to say about the latest misanthropic meal from Werewolves.
First off, what was the recording/writing process like for Die For Us? Five albums in, has that process changed at all or has it been pretty similar? What can fans expect from this latest release?
Sam: Not a single thing has changed at all. Nothing. We were tempted to re-release the previous album and just change the title and artwork, see if anyone noticed.
Seriously, we’re pretty lucky that we found a process that works for us so well so early on with Werewolves. For anyone that hasn’t heard, Matt [Wilcock, guitars] will usually write an album in a week (he’s slowed down these days), Dave [Haley] will do the drums a month or two later, then I get it and write the basslines, do the vocals, and the job’s done. We use the same studios, same engineers, same mixers, same everything. I think we proved with our Faustian album last year that we can use the same people and processes and still come up with something drastically different. I think bands try and make up for their own lack of creativity by changing up all the staff and expecting that to create their musical evolution for them, but all that does is just puts another hurdle in front of yourselves. I wish Morbid Angel stuck with Fleming Rasmussen after Covenant, the world would be a happier place. Our fans expect violence and they shall get violence.
As a fan, the pace of one album a year has been absolutely killer. How are you guys able to hit such a steady pace? What’s fueling the creative fire and has it been difficult to stay so consistent?
Sam: No, we’ve got a taste for it now. I think that for many artists the hard work is quite often them sitting around thinking about how hard it is to do an album. We don’t sit still long enough to drift into that mindset. If you’ve got the right people you can crack on at this pace. We set ourselves a goal of ten albums in ten years, and they all have to be filthy ridiculous bangers, and nothing motivates a group of guys like trying to get a high score.
Die For Us, like always, has another amazingly unsettling album cover that I’m gonna be staring at for months. Who does your album covers and how much direction do you give them going in? How stoked are you to see the final artwork?
Sam: Tasmanian freak Mitchell Nolte does all our album covers, and it’s always a treat for us when he sends them through. We get onto him once all the music and lyrics are done so he has something to work with, and I often try and think up a theme to the album, which is hard because there often isn’t one. I have to spread my cheeks, ram my head right up there, and blink until something comes into focus. Mitchell’s work is great, there’s always some detail in the piece which throws your head off-kilter. We also found out late last year that he’s been working in an overarching theme to all our releases – easy to do with us, what with the yearly releases – and so there’s an unexpected depth to his work. Probably not apparent due to how visceral it is.
For Die For Us, were you looking to build on My Enemies Look and Sound Like Me or was there anything new you wanted to try on this one? Obviously you want a Werewolves album to sound like Werewolves but were there any new avenues you wanted to explore here?
Sam: I know Dave was throwing down extra hard recording this album and experienced nothing but pain and misery recording it. It was probably just another Tuesday for Matt. I think they might have been on an Angelcorpse kick during writing as opposed to their usual Marduk-worship. I wanted to do death metal anthems which is how we ended up with stuff like “We All Deserve To Be Slaves,” and I also wanted to use a more aggressive almost-yelling kind of vocal, as well as the usual highs and lows. I think I had been listening to some of the songs Kevin Sharp did with Lock Up and I love how he sounds like he’s going full kamikaze bonkers. Aggression is what it’s all about. Most death metal vocalists sound like they’re sitting in a sea of Doritos with a packed bong in front of YouTube vocal tutorials. You all know this to be true.
I wanted to ask about the musical/lyrical inspiration for some of the tracks on the new album. Where did the inspiration for “We All Deserve to Be Slaves” come from?
Sam: Heh, I think Matt’s getting confident we can keep up if he goes for a bit of a wander around the fretboard which he does in the second half of the song when things get proper crazy. For all the years that people have called our idiotic chromatic low-IQ halfwittery “tech,” this is the first time it springs to mind that we actually do something kinda technical.
Lyrically, I was noticing in the last year or so that everyone seems to be making idiotic decisions that aren’t in their interests from CEOs, city councils, voters, and everyone in between, everywhere. It’s like they’ve been driven into a foaming frenzy to punch at some fictitious strawmen that have been plonked down in front of them, and they don’t care who they throw their lot in with as long as they get to throw a punch as well. If you’re not part of this craze, it’s weird to see such dribbling caveman behaviour in the modern world, it looks more suited to a howling pitchfork-wielding peasant mob. I don’t want the listener feeling comfortable or superior either, there’s a few songs where I make it clear that I’m including them when I yell about these people.
I love the video for that one too. What was filming that one like and, in general, how was that Tech Trek tour that you filmed it on?
Sam: Rushed as fuck! We got the live crowd footage of course but had to do some close-ups of the vocals pre-show to help tie it all together, which we banged out in one take right before doors opened…we could hear everyone outside, there was a chance they’d start streaming in just to see me silently miming away. Turned out alright though.
That tour was ace, I would have been at the Archspire show anyway so getting to see them five nights in a row was special. It sucks that it was such a short tour, felt like we were all just starting to chill together and then BANG, it was over. It was great fun having Ingested too, they’re right geezers. Sometimes you see bands succeeding and you’re like “ah fuck ’em,” you know it’s some music industry fix, but both those bands work so hard and are lovely, lucky, talented guys. You can’t help but be proud of them and wish them the best.
How about the inspiration behind “Beaten Back to Life?”
Sam: Matt has taken to throwing song titles at me and I think we’re at the stage now where one or two puns are going on each album. He hit me with that title and I had to come up with something to match it. I guess the lyrics started cause of that trendy cynicism (which lives through the ages) expressing itself with the current crop of infants calling everything “cringe.” You know those guys that are incapable of doing anything so they spend their time shitting on other people’s work? So I was like right, fuck it, here’s a song about how everyone born after 1990 is worthless. I know that’s like 90% of our fans so our career will probably die after this album.
What about the story behind “Fuck You Got Mine?”
Sam: It’s funny, the guys sent the music to me and my first thought was damn, sounds like a Six Feet Under song. And I never listened to Six Feet Under, so I brought up one of their songs randomly, and it was some total shit one where Chris Barnes is going ‘eeeeeeeeeee’ and I was like fucking hell, that’s the worst stuff I’ve heard in my life. So I was thinking right, it has to be like them but with decent vocals.
I try and write about stuff that actually has some relevance to people i.e.; not zombies, and I know everywhere is having some form of housing crisis right now. There seems to this generation of people that think it’s their right to accrue property and force the younger population into homelessness, the general lack of social conscience right now is fucking staggering. Those people that are like, there’s no law against it, so I should be able to do it, as if they’re a three-year-old with no moral compass of their own. So I thought fuck it, if we’re going to be callously evil I’ll write a song from their point of view. I think it will play as well in the UK, US, NZ, Europe, and China as it will in Australia.
You guys have managed to keep the same lineup for five years and five albums. How are you able to keep such a strong and healthy band dynamic?
Sam: We’re old, that helps. A band is fun to be in when you’re an adult, but a hell of a thing to be in when you’re trying to grow up. We’re not all young bucks in our first band, trying to lock antlers over everything. We’ve known each other for decades, and been in other bands together for ages – Matt and I toured the world with The Berzerker back in the early 2000’s, for instance. So we don’t all break down in a tizz if we don’t agree on every single thing. Pumping out so much music and being in other bands helps. I guess if you’re all in just the one band together and only doing one album every four years, there’s probably a bit of desperation for all your ideas to get a hearing.
With the album coming out in a few months, what are the plans for the rest of 2024 for Werewolves?
Sam: Working on album number six, trying to find different aspects of the human condition to make fun of, making another Faustian album…Dave will do a national tour with Psycroptic, Matt’s doing a Japan tour with Shotgun Mistress, they’re both going to play some Abramelin shows. We’ll probably have to start thinking about doing some more Werewolves shows at some point, hey.
Photo at top: Die for Us album cover. Make sure to check out the new album on July 12th!
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