We recently caught up with Wölfrider’s drummer Bartek to find out a little more about the band. This is what happened!
Can you introduce yourself and tell me a little about the band?
We are Wölfrider from Poland and we do Heavy fuckin Metal. Our music is combination of new, powerful sound and the old school way of playing this kind of music that happens to be lost among years. Trying our best to pick up inspirations from everything and everyone else, recently from Amon Amarth for instance. So we look behind to the stuff from ‘80 and ‘90 as root of our style, wrapped with modern sound quality and spiced by many, many licks from other genres and today’s music. We cherish the classic Heavy Metal by trying to make it appealing and interesting again.
How did you get started?
We started at the end of 2012, some said that the world would end but actually our previous project ended – Clairvoyant. So we lost our former vocalist and were tired of that band. We took a little break, wrote new material and found a new vocalist – Rambo (Rafał Gębicki) from his ex-band Deversor. As Wölfrider we got our first show at Emergenza Festival.
How would you describe your live show to someone who hasn’t seen you yet?
Many things changed during the last few years, we’ve been progressing as everyone else I guess. If you like the classic Heavy Metal sound, low ass-kicking sound (now we’ve been playing in B-Standard tuning, common in extreme metal bands), strong rhythm section and you like rock’n’roll appearance and massive amount of stage energy – go to our show, have a beer and smash the club with us! And we’re extremely handsome, right ladies ? 😉 😉
What would you say the best show you’ve ever played has been?
Lots of gigs were awesome but definitely the best one was In Memory of Quorthon – Tribute to Bathory show. We played covers only and the audience was huge, over 200+ people for that kind of music. It was also great responsibility in some ways, because Bathory never played live, some songs used to be played by other bands covering Bathory and others – I think – never, ever played live. That was a lifetime experience.
If you could play anywhere in the world, with any band, what would you choose?
Shit, man…that’s obvious! Iron Maiden, Accept, Manowar? Any place? Personally I would play a gig in a toilet if that would be as support for King Diamond for instance. I think as most metalheads in bands we would love to play at Wacken Open Air festival or Ozzfest – who knows? Dreams may come true some day.
What has been your best experience in the business?
I can recall a few situations. First one – being on CD included to legendary British magazine – Terrorizer. 20 000 CDs with our song Rise of NWO. Later on similarly – published on Zero Tolerance Magazine. In October we played as support for Beastmilk and In Solitude. We had an honor to be complemented by special guest that comes from nowhere – Adam “Nergal” Darski from Behemoth. He got our CD and said that we remind him one old school Polish Heavy Metal band – Open Fire. Until today we have no idea why Open Fire, we sound nothing like them, haha!
And what’s the hardest thing about being in the business?
Money. Simply as that. You have to assume that you’ll never gonna earn any money by playing metal music. That’s rule number one. Second one, you’re gonna pay a lot of money to do everything besides music. Promotion, marketing, publishing, gigging – everything costs and you have to be ready to put some effort into it before it pays back. It’s like running your own company – you have to be a man, grab industry by the balls and take the risk. If you are great as musician, live performer, studio engineer, accountant, economist, logistic specialist, HR manager, PR agent and technology & gear geek – you’re gonna be fine. Not kidding.
What inspires you?
As I said our main influences are classic Heavy Metal bands from Germany, for example Running Wild, Accept, Grave Digger – not to mention Iron Maiden. Well at some point every metal band is inspired by Iron Maiden, right? We like to take our own piece of cake from Bathory and Manila Road, that can be heard on self-titled track from our demo EP. We’re inspired basicly by everything in metal music and outside. We even got some ideas from grindcore to write low, pounding, beefy and massive riffs with that characteristic rudeness.
And what is Wölfrider’s plans for 2015?
We’re going to release a single to test new techniques of recording music and tease with our upcoming debut full album. Everything needs to be planed in time now it’s just idea in our heads without any particular deadlines. We think about streaming our gigs live in future, but there is lots of work to do on that area. And of course – more, more and even more gigs ! I hope that we will play good ol’ Heavy Metal outside Poland in 2015. Yeah.. I’m gonna do some calls to make this happen…
