VarulV Interview!

1.Greetings!
How are things in VarulV bunker?
I saw your new great photo shoot, i get a feeling that something new is brewing from your wolf-den?

- Hails out there and thanks for the interview! 
After some line-up changes we finally found our constellation of musicians to bring back the power of „Hellish Presence“ times, consisting of Grimnyr, the last founding member on the bass. me, Irrah den Fryktelige on guitar and vocals and last but not least Heimdall’s Auge on drums. Yes, the photo shoot was really nice and cold haha. 
We made it at the castle ruin Frauenburg in Unzmarkt, Styria with our friend Raffael Peter from Noisepit Photography for promo pictures of our upcoming album „Wolfszorn“. Some other plans are still in work so be prepared!

2.How did you come in contact with Talheim Records? Was Naturmacht Productions
displeasing?

- This has a little background story. 
At first, we already were at the studio for the record of „Wolfszorn“ at an old „friend“ of Grimnyr. During the recording days we drank a little bit in the evening and he told us about a label he owns and stuff and we had good faith in it. So we quit our contract with Naturmacht Production in peace to sign at Murtal Records. For our bad luck. After we paid for the recording and the mixing and mastering works had to be done he found some private excuses to not do it. 
This was going on for weeks and in the end he didn’t respond to anything so the fucker ripped us off. In the end we had an unfinished album with worse sound and no label so we went to Audioriot Recordings to record everything again. I signed already at Talheim Records with my other band Ketelens‘ Brukke so we also asked for Varulv and at the Austrian Black Metal Force we signed the contract.

3.Last year seemed like a great gig year for you! Austrian Black Metal Force IV looked like
a killer! Whats your experience of it? And there also where the Kaltenbach Open Air Festival.

- Yeah 2014 granted us some great experience! ABMF was a nice gig with a great line-up. A lot of austrian black metal bands which already are a long time in business. For most people it was like an class reunion in school to meet old friends and band mates, so it really was a killer evening. Also the KOA. A perfect location in the woods, great bands and 3 days of alcohol. For our bad we played on the last day so we had to force all our remaining power to play haha. But not to forget, also the Julfest and the gig with Kurgaall in Italy earlier 2014 were a blast for us! 

 

4.What is your main strength playing live? And going on road is there some "stuff" you have to bring along survive the ordeal?
By the look of it you seem to really come alive on stage.

- Especially as an austrian black metal band in Austria, it’s hard to get a good crowd because the most scene fuckers go at a concert for the big headliner and come during the co-headliner or the other ones only go there to get drunk. So you have to choose the right gigs to play at. But our main strength isn’t to have a full house of morons which aren’t interested in our music. 
We want to share our feels and thoughts inside our music to others which feel and think the same when they hear it. Even if only a few come to us after a gig, having a drink together or taking some photos, but when you hear that they like the show or want some cd’s for support our great music, this gives us the force to keep up the work. Besides this, we don’t have any special stuff to bring with us. Corpsepaint, blood and spikes for a black metal show.

5.Going back to your first official release the split with Hellsaw, how do you feel about these material now? 

 - For the next two questions I had to ask Grimnyr because this was before mine and Heimdall’s Auge’s time. The split with Hellsaw was planned by a label called “Westwall Productions” or something like this, but never was released due to some personal problems of the label owner for which he went to jail for. So the first release of Varulv was more or less a self-released demo called “Under A Blood Red Moon”.

6.Four years later your debut full length "Hellish Presence" got out from the dim forest! A strong and clear album i think, how was your time doing this record? what was your personal goals with it?

 
- I think the main goal of this album was the same like for other bands, to let the people know about the existence and sound of the band. It wasn’t hard work for it because Svart, the old drummer and Grimnyr went to studio to record their instruments. Inferius, the old vocalist and lead guitarist, recorded his stuff at home and has also done the mixing and mastering works. 
 
7.If you would pick one band that has been important to the bands sound and reason of existence from these countries who/what would they be?
 a.Austria b.Sweden. c.Norway. d.Finland. e.USA. f.Greece g.France.

- I definitely would say Austria but you can’t pick one single band. The reason is, every band member also played in other bands before, so everyone gathered his own experience and we brought it together in our chambers to make the music of Varulv to something special. Maybe only for us, but maybe for many others who understands it.

8.Around 2 years ago the second split "When Life Brings Sorrow Beyond Death..." with Tattered Soul & Nightforest was released, how was the reception to this one and would you say your sound had change some how here compared to the album?
And whats the story behind the song "Opfer "?

 
- About this there is not much to say, because in my personal opinion I don’t like it very much. In this time we had a lot of line-up changes, so in the end Grimnyr recorded the bass and drums and Azazel the lead guitar. I have done the rhythm guitar and we had Abominator of Ketelens’ Brukke as session vocalist. All this happened next to our session room in a small “amateur studio” so the mixing and mastering was also quite bad. I can’t even say something about “Opfer” because I haven’t ever seen the lyrics, sorry. Too bad we had some poor production for this because so it doesn’t fit to the nice music of the other two bands.

9.So what’s up next for VarulV?

- Our next steps are the release of our album “Wolfszorn” in spring 2015 via Talheim Records, to find some gigs around Europe to promote it and to keep up the work on new material so stay tuned!

10.Thanks for your time!
Last howl is yours!

- Infernal Hails to the readers and our comrades and thanks for the interview.