INTRODUCING: The Howling
Barely a year into their existence, THE HOWLING have already begun to feel less like a new band and more like a fully realised world unfolding in real time. With their debut EP Salvo already out in the wild and a touring schedule that has taken them from sweatbox club shows to some of the UK and Europe’s most recognisable stages, the pace of their rise has been as striking as the music itself. At the centre of it all is frontman Mikey Lord, a songwriter still adjusting to the speed at which everything around him is scaling upward, outward, and far beyond what even he initially expected. Speaking shortly after a run of shows with CREEPER and STARBENDERS, and with Download Festival looming alongside upcoming dates with THE FUNERAL PORTRAIT, Lord reflects on a year that feels like it’s accelerating faster than he can fully process.
After a mammoth start to 2026, the conversation kicks off with asking how the year has been so far, there is zero hesitation from Lord as he says with a smile “It’s been absolutely wild. We’ve just come off a five-and-a-half week tour with CREEPER across the UK and Europe, had a couple of weeks at home, then went straight into shows with STARBENDERS. Now we’re heading into Download, and after that we’ve got more dates lined up with THE FUNERAL PORTRAIT.” There is a brief pause for a second, as if mentally trying to place himself back at the start of the year. “The strange thing is, we only launched the band in September. Everything since then has just been this constant acceleration. It doesn’t feel like a slow build, it feels like we’ve been thrown straight into motion.” There’s a grin in his voice when he adds, “we’re just grateful for it, honestly. It’s a lot, but it’s exciting.”
If The Howling’s wonderful debut EP; Salvo, feels like the work of a band already several steps into their identity, that’s partly because THE HOWLING didn’t really arrive in fragments. Lord is careful not to frame the project as something that materialised overnight, instead pointing toward years of shared history and unfinished ideas that eventually snapped into focus at the right moment. “It didn’t come from nowhere,” he explains. “We’ve all been in previous bands, we’ve all known each other for a long time, and this idea had been building in the background for a while.” When the decision was finally made to move, there was no half-measure. Salvo wasn’t something they built toward after announcing themselves: it was already waiting. “We had the EP finished when we launched,” he says. “That was really important for us. We didn’t want to be figuring it out after the fact. We wanted to step into it properly, with something solid already there.” In many ways, Salvo became the foundation rather than the beginning. A statement of intent dropped at the exact moment the band entered public view.
One of the clearest ideas running through Salvo is that THE HOWLING aren’t just building songs, they’re building a space around them. It’s a creative instinct that has quickly extended beyond the music itself, with hardcore fans already beginning to treat their music like something with its own internal mythology. “That’s exactly what we wanted,” Lord says. “I’ve always been drawn to the idea of music being more than just tracks on a record. With Salvo, it felt like the first time we could really build that properly.” He’s still slightly taken aback by how quickly listeners have leaned into it. “People are already creating theories, connecting lyrics, picking apart visuals, trying to figure out how everything links together.”
An excellent example stands out in which Lord says through some wry laughter, “Someone made this full detective-style board of all the clues and teasers we’ve dropped. It was like something out of Only Murders in the Building. Strings everywhere, notes, images, it was insane to see, but also really exciting. That kind of engagement is exactly what Salvo was meant to spark.” When it came to shaping the EP itself, Lord describes a process that was less about finding songs and more about narrowing down a flood of ideas into something focused and deliberate. “I’m always writing,” he says. “There’s never a shortage of material. The real challenge is deciding what actually belongs in the same world.” That sense of curation is what gives Salvo its cohesion. “You end up with songs you love individually, but they don’t always sit in the same emotional space. So you have to be honest about what fits and what doesn’t.”
Live, the world of Salvo has expanded quickly. THE HOWLING have moved from tightly packed debut shows in smaller venues to much larger rooms in a matter of months, often while still learning how the songs behave on stage. “We started in really small places,” Lord says. “Rooms like Blondies in London and Castle Hotel in Manchester, tiny, sweaty rooms, but with amazing energy.” Then came the rapid leap. “We played the Deaf Institute not long after, and suddenly we were out on a full tour with CREEPER in much bigger spaces.” It was a tour where the transition for THE HOWLING wasn’t gentle, but it was formative. “That tour really shaped us. Night after night you’re figuring it out, how to pace a set, how to hold a crowd, how to grow into a room.” Watching experienced bands helped sharpen that instinct. “CREEPER are just an incredible band live. You learn a lot just by being around that level every night.”
For now, though, everything circles back to Salvo, the foundation, the introduction, and the spark that set everything in motion. And while THE HOWLING is still early in their story, Mikey Lord already sounds like someone learning to live inside the momentum rather than chase it. “There’s always more music coming,” Lord teases. “That part isn’t stopping.”
Salvo is out now via self-release. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS131 here.
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