Howl Said the Wolves,
Howl Said The Wolves are ready to be heard.
The Guelph hard rock / metal quartet — featuring guitarist Erik Sadler, bassist Zac Culp, drummer Andrew Haynes, and lead vocalist Karl Weber — released their debut five-song EP, “Oppror,” in April, an unusual title that translates from its original Norwegian as “revolt.”
“It was kind of one of those things where the songs on the record were coming together, and we were starting to see what they were about lyrically,” explained Sadler in a phone interview. “For the longest time, we were tossing ideas around, and I’ve just kind of always had a thing with Viking culture, and I was just on the internet one day and wondered what the word would be like for uprising or rebellion. And the word just looked really cool, it seemed like it fit, and I fired it off to the guys and they all really liked it, and we decided on it pretty fast.”
Using a word from a foreign language also allowed the band to come up with a title that summarized the album’s lyrical themes in a subtle way.
“There’s a bunch of songs on the record, (and) while they’re not necessarily superpolitical, there are a lot of themes of rebellion and dissatisfaction, and that was just something we felt we could get behind, but we wanted to put it behind something instead of just coming right out and saying it,” said Sadler.
One such song is album opener “Hobson’s Choice,” a term referring to a supposedly free choice where no real choice exists. The idea is named for Thomas Hobson, a sixteenth-century stable owner who famously offered customers the choice of any of his horses, as long as they chose the one he had placed closest to the door.
“It’s the illusion of choice, but not really having any choice,” said Sadler. “Lyrically, the song’s about working all week just to pay the rent, but you don’t actually get ahead — just feeling really helpless, feeling like there should be some kind of a choice, and you’re told there is, but there isn’t really one.”
Formed in the spring of 2013, the band’s lineup solidified later that year when Weber replaced the group’s original singer, and the current lineup was set when Haynes replaced founding member Matt Weiler on drums in 2015. Sadler said the band takes a collaborative approach to songwriting.
“There’s definitely not a main songwriter or anything like that. Every song we’ve ever written, everyone’s had input on. That being said, I usually come in with a guitar riff or a chord progression or something, and then from there Andrew and Zac and I will go at it a million ways, and add stuff and take stuff out, and change everything until we’re happy with it, and then at that point Karl takes over and does his vocals on top of it,” he said.
Recorded over five days at Beach Road Studios in Goderich with engineer Siegfried Meier, “Oppror” features songs that have been in the band’s set since their early days (“Void”) alongside newer material like lead single and video, “Comatose,” a tune that was written just weeks before recording began. Sadler said the group wrote about 20 songs for the album, but whittled it down to five for reasons of finance and quality control.
“We probably could have put two or three more songs on it, in regards to songs that we felt really, really good about and that were of good enough quality (that) we wanted other people to hear them,” he said. “But realistically we wanted to record a really high quality album, and I think that the recordings sound really, really good, and maybe better (than) what you would expect from a local band. The recording quality — whether or not you like the songs or whatever, is completely up to you — but the actual recording quality we think is really, really good, but unfortunately that also costs more. It’s not throwing a guy a couple hundred bucks over a weekend and a case of beer, it’s thousands and thousands of dollars. So as an independent band, part of that was definitely financial as well.”
Now that “Oppror” has been out for a few months, Sadler said the band are working on firming up some tour plans for later in the year. They’re also working on new material and are already “four or five songs into the next EP or album, whatever it ends up being,” he said. “We’re at least still plugging away at things, and always trying new things while writing.”
You can catch Howl Said The Wolves at Maxwell’s Saturday night as part of the KOI Fest Local Music Showcase, where they’ll be appearing with five other area bands. Doors open at 7 p.m.