Seasons of the Wolf (aka “SOTW”) as a band has been described as “Progressive, Gothic, New Age Metal” or missing link between “progressive” and “heavy.” Which would be an accurate description?
**SOTW/Skully – That is a pretty correct description. Although some of our German friends like to call it “Psycho, Hippie, Doom Metal” hahahaha and we think that is pretty cool. It really depends on what song your listening to. We have a signature SOTW sound and theme that is based on Horror and Sci-Fi inspirations. But, sometimes we get into other topics.
Current Line-up:
Wes Edward Waddell – Vocals,
Barry “Skully” Waddell – Guitar/Producer
Dennis Ristow – Keyboards/Engineer
Bill Bois – Bass
Mark Empire – Drums
Your song lyric “Never realizing, their towers will fall when they get too high” track 1 on “New Age Revolution”does the band see this as being a vision or prophecy of what was to come? If so did this cross the bands mind in the wake of the tragedy?
**SOTW/Skully – Yeah you got that right on the money. In fact the album was already finished and ready for release the same week. Talk about cold chills running up the spine. We were almost afraid to release the album thinking that maybe some people would take it the wrong way. The song New Age Revolution lyrics were written to be more about the current main stream music industry and large corporations in the world. Even more chilling is opening up the lyric book from our 1999 release Lost In Hell and check out the lyrics and background art for the song Abandoned City. We wrote the song back in 1992. My brother and I have always written a good portion of the lyrics along with Dennis. We are generally fairly pessimistic when dealing with topics about the human society. We are very optimistic when writing about space travel, horror, and …well…getting off this planet. We are dreamers.
Have you recorded any of your music in any other languages? If so tell us about it.
**SOTW/Skully – Yes in fact we did. We had a good friend and supporter come for a visit from Norway back in summer 1998 while we were finishing up tracks for Lost In Hell. So, he helped my brother rework and re-produce the lyrics to the title track Lost In Hell into Norwegian. Is it true your songs “Dead Zone” & “Storm of the Century” were inspired by Stephen King? If so how did this come about? **SOTW/Skully – Very true indeed. As was several other SOTW songs inspired by other book writers and film writer/directors. John Carpenter, Ann Rice, Dario Argento, George Romero, and more. The song Electric Dimension from the first album was directly inspired from the film Lawnmower Man.
I understand SOTW is becoming quite a force In The Horror and Science Fiction film industry, can you tells us about that?
**SOTW/Skully – Well my brother Wes, Dennis, and I have always had one thing in common right from the start of this band. It is part of what brought us together. We love the Horror/Sci-Fi and Fantasy Film industry. Even more so, the lower budget ones. Some really great films and filmmakers have come that genre. It is a direct effect on our music as we are also inspired by music used in the soundtracks of these films such as Tangerine Dream. In the past 4 years we have been working with a handful of Indie Horror filmmakers and they have been using our music in their films as well as featuring our music videos as bonus for the DVD releases into Hollywood video.
When you formed the band over 20 years ago did you ever think your success would come to you through films as opposed to the typical CD releases & tours?
** SOTW/Skully – We thought of it back then. But, back then we just used it for our own entertainment and it inspired our song writing. It became more apparent as time moved forward that we should follow up on that when fans and reviewers kept taking about how our music sounded like it would be great to hear in film soundtracks, and should be used in film sound tracks. It all seemed to be calling out. SOTW has never been the kind of band that current mainstream trends would give a huge amount of attention in order to expose the band. So, SOTW flies under the radar for many people that really like our music. They just had no way of finding out about it. Now our involvement with the films has helped SOTW to reach a entire demographic niche of its own kind outside the normal music industry promotional tactics. And really it has been done before. Tangerine Dream has had a highly successful career and made over 80 albums since the 60’s and are still pumping them out today. Much of their music has been in film big soundtracks. We have already been approached about scoring a entire film project and of course we said “hell yes”!!
Is there anything that you have found in working in films that was unexpected, something challenging or an extra reward?
**SOTW/Skully – Nothing really challenging yet. If we get to do a score for a film..then that will sure be a challenge we are up for. The films we have been involved with so far have made use of already recorded SOTW music. They take bits and pieces and edit them to suit whatever scene is happening and use it for opening and closing credits as well as feature bonus music video which helps promote sells of our full-length albums. And that is a huge reward because those sales are coming from people that probably would have never found out about SOTW anywhere else.
This has also created other avenues of exposure through Horror show TV hosts in some cities around the US. For instance Butch R. Cleaver from Cincinnati, OH. With his show Meet Cleaver Theatre he has been featuring SOTW music video during his show breaks. Butch also attends several Horror conventions around the country and he has been helping more by passing out hundreds of SOTW sample CD’s. Lots of people in the industry end up hearing about the band. It is great cross promotion for everyone.
What can your fans expect next from SOTW? A new album? More merchandise? Upcoming shows?
**SOTW/Skully – We are working on a brand new studio album along with a full-length SOTW DVD rock-umentary (i.e. our own rock documentary!). The DVD will have 9 SOTW music videos, extra back stage fun footage from lots of live shows, and several interviews with band members. It should be quite entertaining for the fans as it will cover the first 12 years of SOTW and bring it right up to date at the end with one brand new video for the 4th release. We hope to have it all done and ready by early next year. That is not very far away!