Powerwolf: Heretic Hunting Thunderpriests

The past decade has seen POWERWOLF’s fortunes improve at a gradual but unstoppable pace. The lupine-obsessed German five-piece have risen the ranks and are now one of the biggest names in power metal. Across Europe, they’re an arena-filling, festival-headlining monolith and they’re making significant progress in the UK as well.

Success hasn’t come without a cost though and their keyboardist, Falk Maria Schlegel has been kept very busy during the constant grind of life in a professional metal band. When Distorted Sound speaks with him, he’s roughly halfway through a six-hour interview marathon and already spent a sizeable chunk of his day answering questions about Wake Up The Wicked, the latest POWERWOLF album. As the link between the band and their management, record label and booking agency, he’s got loads of bureaucracy to manage, so it would be entirely understandable if he wasn’t in the best of moods.

Instead, he’s got more energy than we do. He answers every question with enthusiasm and charm, makes several jokes and laughs easily throughout our conversation. He’s conclusive proof that despite the stereotype, German people do have a sense of humour and he’s clearly excited about the new record.

Wake Up The Wicked is the band’s ninth full-length (tenth, if you count last year’s odds ‘n’ sods collection Interludium) and it’s another highly enjoyable collection of anthems. The songs are slightly shorter this time, but they’re full of big choruses, bombastic riffs and catchy melodies. They didn’t set out to write snappier songs, but it’s given Wake Up The Wicked a particular vibe.

“We didn’t recognise at first that the songs are not as long as usual, but I think that’s why this album has a certain dynamic,” he tells us. “It feels like one people will finish and then immediately listen to again. It wasn’t until we rehearsed them that we realised they were turning out shorter.”

As a result, Wake Up The Wicked feels like POWERWOLF at their most streamlined. It’s a fast, punchy album where every song comes across like a mini epic. They are loud, grandiose singalongs designed to get thousands of fists punching skywards and it’s a glorious, melodramatic party, even when they tackle dark subjects.

“Art can entertain even with serious topics,” says Falk. “You don’t have to insist on saying ‘oh my God, how was bad was this?’ When people come to our shows, it’s the Heavy Metal Mass. It’s a party, I’m not thinking about suffering, I’m having a good time.”

This is arguably POWERWOLF’s biggest strength, they always find ways to be entertaining. Their live shows are enormous celebrations with Falk and his bandmates clearly having an incredible time and there’s very little introspection or brooding to be had. POWERWOLF aren’t afraid of the dark, but don’t expect to wallow in misery with them, even if they do wear corpse paint.

There’s also a surprising amount of depth to their music and on this record, that’s most immediately apparent on 1589. On the surface, it’s a classic POWERWOLF song with a memorable hook and lots of theatricality, but there’s far more to it than a straightforward playlist-friendly single. It tells the story of Peter Stumpp, the so-called Werewolf Of Bedburg, a famous figure from a grim part of German history. Born at some point in the 1530s, Stumpp grew up to become a farmer and would have likely been forgotten if it wasn’t for how he met his end. After several shocking murders in the local community, Stumpp was arrested and confessed to killing two pregnant women and fourteen children, including his own son. Shortly after, he was placed on a torture wheel and subjected to a horrific death that involved red hot pincers and a beheading.

This may sound like a rather formulaic “serial killer inspires metal song” story, but there’s more to it. During his trial, Stumpp was accused of being a werewolf who committed his crimes due to an insatiable bloodlust. That alone makes him perfect fodder for a POWERWOLF song, but that’s not all. Stumpp was a Protestant in a largely Catholic region and the tensions between two conflicting strands of Christianity form a water-muddying backdrop to his story. Plus, his confession was made under torture and that’s not exactly the most reliable way to ensure factual accuracy.

“It was fascinating to do research into that story, we looked at flyers and documents from Denmark and the UK about this trial and they talked about this guy as if he was a werewolf! But he was also an outsider, and it took place during these dark times, and we had the context of him being a werewolf and a dark person, but we also had the theme of his suffering,” Falk explains. “The torture back then was really gruesome, the Middle Ages were not the best time to live!”

So, while it’s easy to dismiss POWERWOLF and indeed, the wider power metal genre as rather frivolous, there’s a lot more to them than simple entertainment. In this one song, there’s a combination of murder, torture, religious persecution, evil, and an ever-present spectre of whether he genuinely was guilty or just a scapegoat.

“I don’t know if he was really guilty. Perhaps he was a murderer, but this was a time of war and there were no objective people in this case, but our focus was on telling a story. We are entertainers and we’re fascinated by things like this.”

If you’ve spent much time delving into their back catalogue though, you’ll already know that POWERWOLF aren’t exclusively interested in the dark. They’ve got a proud tradition of writing more light-hearted tracks that are laced with filthy innuendos and come across like a Gothic version of a CARRY-ON movie. One of their more popular numbers is titled Resurrection By Erection and revolves around the rejuvenating powers of oral sex. Wake Up The Wicked continues this cheeky ritual with Kyrie Klitorem, which at first glance seems innocent enough, but don’t use your work computer to translate it.

“I like when people just wind up discussing the song title, even if they don’t hear the song!” Laughs Falk. “We released the titles and people are already talking about Kyrie Klitorem, just because of the name. There’s a thin line between stupid silly stuff and more nudge and wink stuff, we like to hit this line in a comic way.”

Kyrie Klitorem might have a naughty subject matter, but it’s also a great song. You could strip the lyrics out and replace them with something more straight-faced and it would still be a great song, but that’s one reason why POWERWOLF’s sense of humour works. The jokes are a bonus, rather than the main selling point. They can sit alongside serious-minded cuts about the Inquisition and Swedish werewolf mythology without seeming out of place, all of them forming a part of the band’s wider ‘metal mass’.

This approach has already led POWERWOLF to conquer mainland Europe and they’re making in-roads into the English-speaking metal world too. In the past, power metal has struggled to break into the British market, but alongside contemporaries like SABATON, POWERWOLF are doing much to change that. The Swedish war-enthusiasts have already made history by headlining Wembley Arena twice, and it’s a relatively safe bet that POWERWOLF will be next.

Which might explain why Falk spends the first part of our interview discussing British slang.

“I heard the phase ‘that’s proper sound.’ That means ‘cool,’ right?”

It certainly does.

“Cheers mate.”

Wake Up The Wicked is out now via Napalm Records.

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