Powerwolf: Blessed To Be The Best

POWERWOLF have now been playing their special brand of power metal for over 15 years. It’s an impressive feat for any band, but especially for this band out of Germany. Since Return In Bloodred, POWERWOLF have explored supernatural topics for songs like werewolves and vampires, as well as exploring gothic sounds and styles within their music. Having showcased their music on tour with bands like BATTLE BEAST and AMARANTHE, and planning more once gigs start back up, Distorted Sound talk with the band’s organist, Falk Maria Schlegel, about their upcoming compilation and the itch to come back to the stage.

“If the government says it would be announced like it’s allowed again to play loud, to be honest, it doesn’t matter where!” Falk Maria Schlegel explains. “On a ship, on a plane, on an island, wherever it’s possible to go on stage again that would be really great! In June, in May, or even this year, that would be great. And that would give me some new colour. But the place doesn’t matter in this case, just to have the stage. Even a small one!” 

The new compilation for POWERWOLF, Best Of The Blessed, charters the best of the band’s discography, hence the title. But instead of simple remastering, the band opted instead to actually re-record tracks for the compilation. “We didn’t want to have only a sticker on the album saying remaster or mastered for Spotify or remastered for iTunes, you know, we wanted to bring something new, even though the songs are old,” he says. “The most important thing is that for example, Sanctified With Dynamite or Resurrection By Erection have not changed at all in their character. It’s still the same song with the way we play nowadays. We still play the songs live so for something familiar, we added some quiet elements. But we didn’t change the solo.”

Falk Maria Schlegel continued on to say, “after 15 years and seven albums, it’s quite okay and cool to have a compilation, and it truly is the best of. Even if we can show our fans, the people, which songs we personally, the band, like. I have to say that we re-recorded some songs without changing the whole character of the songs but we find it a little bit boring to just have the old songs one to one, on to this one. This felt a bit strange because we played these songs so much live and to enter the studio again with the songs was quite a new experience. It felt like we did it for the first time you know so I guess it’s important to have those new elements as well in this best of compilation.”

Hearing an organ within power metal is a unique aspect to POWERWOLF that Falk Maria Schlegel fills the role of within the band. “It’s a bit strange, when I started to learn the organ, I also started to listen to IRON MAIDEN,” he discusses. “I wondered why I’m doing this because it’s good to learn guitars, drums, or something else. But it did. I learned the organ because I was growing up in a quiet holy area of Germany, and my impression was always that the church organ is really scary. And I was impressed by that. And then I learned this instrument, and I didn’t find any band at the time because no one wanted to have a keyboard player or an organ player, you know, it was not the instrument everybody wants in a heavy metal band. Even our first producer freaking noted from our record said ‘what’s that? An organ, who needs that?!'” 

Once gigs return after the pandemic, the band have big plans for their live shows. “We are still planning new show concepts, new show elements to enlarge to show with our state proofs of church elements and so on,” Falk Maria Schlegel adds. “And then we’ll have a lot of fire on stage, and we’ll have a great party! It’s always the concept and the aspects that are always very very important for us. I don’t want to compare with RAMMSTEIN but there’s also new elements; the plan was to always have some new elements and we are still planning that when the pandemic is over.”

So what advice would Falk Maria Schlegel give to those bands who’ve yet to make their own best of album? “Every band should have the best of compilation if they have released in the past, I guess, seven or eight albums!”

Best Of The Blessed is out now via Napalm Records.

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