Bad Wolves

Bad Wolves exploded onto the rock music scene in 2018. The USA five piece’s music standing confidently at a crossroads between anthemic hard rock infectiousness and thought provoking technically charged heavy metal.

The band’s debut album, Disobey, was one of the breakthrough albums of 2018. The album was the top selling USA rock release of 2018. Bad Wolves Zombie release was #1 Rock song around the world with all proceeds going to Dolores four children. To date the track has raised over $250,000.
2018 truly was the year of Bad Wolves with a social reach of over 725K and video views exceeding over 325 Million. With the second album N.A.T.I.O.N. doing big things 2020 is set to be even bigger. Hi Fi Way speaks with lead singer Tommy Vext about the album.

Do you feel that Bad Wolves has really evolved as a band?
We have evolved as performers in a live arena, none of us were in an arena band before. All that stuff helped us evolve to be what we want to be. This is a much more focused version of that.

Are there any plans to tour Australia in 2020?
There is talk of Bad Wolves coming to Australia in March, we haven’t solidified anything yet but we are working on it. We want to do a full tour of the whole country. Australia is one of my favourite places in the world. I feel in love with the country, my ex-girlfriend is from Brisbane so I spent a lot of time there and on the Gold Coast. I really like the people, so for us if we can get paid to go there that would be awesome.

How was the recording process for N.A.T.I.O.N? Was there a lot of pressure to have top Disobey?
We didn’t really experience the sophomore pressure because we never took a break. Amidst the chaos of touring relentlessly we were going in to the studio. There was no time, we haven’t had a minute to wrap our heads around the success of the band. Sometimes I do these interviews and I go oh yeah I think we’re successful. We’ve all been touring musicians for so long, so going in to the studio while being on the road some people would think is insane. For us it actually works out because we’re fresh off playing in front of people, we’re fresh off that energy from our live performance and taking that in to the studio helps translate the live performance of being a musician to the studio by go, go, go.

Do your ideas come easily on the road? For some musicians that is quite difficult.
For me it doesn’t matter, John likes to get in to a room and that’s where he feels most comfortable. Doc has a home studio, Chris has a home studio and I think having five guys who can write helps us along the process. The worst position you can be in is that you have to put out a new record and you don’t have enough material. By the time the label asked whether we were working on a new record we were like yeah we have eighteen songs. They were like oh, OK!

With such a strong album was that hard working out what the singles should be?
Um, yes and no! There is always a little bit of a push and pull. Usually John and I are the primary writers so we go over our picks then present them to management. We all decide which ones are the most important and why.

Did the band come up with the creative direction for the album art work?
Historically I’ve handled all the merch and album art work. The first album I collaborated with Zoltan and we did a lot of work on that in trying to think about what Disobey meant and what that looked like. What was a simplistic image was brooding but had social relevance. On this record I worked with Harris Newcombe who is a brilliant photographer from London. N.A.T.I.O.N. represents our fan base and the people who support us and I was a huge fan of his work. When I saw his set of shots that he did with this model Angela, who had a huge wolf tattoo on her stomach reminded me of the thousands of messages we get on social media and emails of people who got tattoos of the band or the logo or they get wolf tattoos autographed. This was a really cool image that depicted this movement these people that are attached to the band.

Interview By Rob Lyon

N.A.T.I.O.N. is out now through Eleven Seven Music and Sony