Sonic Wolves interview

Psychedelic heavy rockers Sonic Wolves reveal details of album III. Known for their heavy, dark, and gritty sound, Sonic Wolves draws inspiration from hard rock, proto-metal, psychedelic rock, and 70s blues, while bringing a fresh and daring approach. Since the beginning of their activity in 2015, Sonic Wolves have played all over Italy and Europe. Together, they continue to push boundaries and deliver powerful compositions that resonate with audiences.
Alan – Hi Band. It's been more than 12 years since you started playing.
Vita - Hello Alan, hello everybody and thanks a lot for this interview. Yes, indeed it’s been 12 years. It seems like yesterday since we started this project that was initially called Tsutar. Everything happened back in May 2012 when Kayt came to Italy from Los Angeles to visit me. We started to jam and we instantly noticed that there was a great musical connection between the two of us. Technically that was the day that Sonic Wolves was conceive. I can say that her musical talent is what made me fall in love both with the musician and the woman.
Kayt – Hello everybody. When I came here to Italy to visit and meet Vita, I knew I wasn’t meeting an amateur and that he was extremely special. He was at Linate airport in Milan waiting for me, as it was the first time we’d ever met in person. In the six months leading up to that we’d spend hours on Skype getting to know each other and finding out what we could dream up together as a musical goal. The trip was worth it because it went so well that I had decided to move to Italy. I returned to the US to collect my belongings and ship them, tie up loose ends, and less than 2 months later I grabbed my cat Samora (she actually just passed away on April 12th) jumped on a plane and was back in Italy on July 25th 2012. That’s when the band really started to be a band.
Nico – Hi everybody, it’s a pleasure and an honor being here.

Alan – Who was at the beginning of the band and who is new?
Kayt – Vita and I formed the band when I moved to Italy in 2012. After less than two years we had a line-up change that made us switch the name to Sonic Wolves. For 10 months following that name change, Vita and I were the only members in the band. It wasn’t until the summer of 2015 when P. Melotto and Diniz joined us on guitars, that Sonic Wolves had a full lineup. 
Nico – I’m the new member. I joined Kayt and Vita in August 2022 but Vita and I have been friends for almost three decades. The band had a festival slot booked in Sardinia so they asked me to learn the bass parts in case Kayt wouldn’t be able to play due to a carpal tunnel problem she was having. Long story short, it happened that I took the former guitarist’s spot and we played the festival and then four months later we recorded III. 
Vita – In the period when Sonic Wolves was a duo in late 2014 and half of 2015, we composed, recorded and released a demo with Stefano Tocci (ex Incoming Cerebral Overdrive) as a special guest on guitar. A year later, with a four member line-up, the guitars and vocals were re-recorded for the first album, Before The End Comes.

Alan - You've had several demos, an EP, and three full-length albums out in your lifetime. The last one is called III. Your creative path?
Kayt – The band was formed with the intention of playing with the same attitude, sound and inner rage that bands such as MC5, Steppenwolf, Grand Funk Railroad, Rainbow, Blue Cheer, etc., had back in late sixties and early seventies. The sound that comes out is bastardized a bit with the heavy rock music we were listening when we were teenagers back in the mid 80s and early 90s. Of course, life and whatever events we live everyday are another huge influence for our music and lyrics.   
Vita – Hard rock and psychedelic music from the 70s are obviously the main inspirations for Sonic Wolves but the idea was to not emulate those bands entirely. Since the beginning we were searching for a personal sound inspired by that amazing musical era but played by musicians who, like Kayt and I, grew up listening to heavy/thrash metal, hard core and punk. 
Nico - Sonic Wolves’ music is a mix of all of those genres for sure but there is something personal too in what we play.

Alan – Does the album being called III means it's third in line? Or should we look for something else in it?
Kayt - III is of course our third full length but it is not the main reason for the name. Actually, the title came from the original album cover concept we had in mind a few years ago when we started writing songs for it. The theme of all songs is escape, which could mean anything from literal jailbreaks to escaping the prison of the mind to death itself. In the original cover idea the Roman numeral III resembles cell bars and every bar contained a slice of our faces in it. This new release isn’t a classic concept album but certainly all songs have the same concept theme.
Vita - Regarding the cover we thought we had a great idea and we were already referring to the album as III. That was until our graphic wizard and dear friend Diogo Soares, of Soares Artwork, brought us a beautiful cover: a circle of 3 wolves chasing each other in perpetuity. It was love at first sight, so we used that graphic and we kept the title of the album III even though the cover changed. It still fit quite well. The name also came from the fact that we are a power trio, from our original Roman numeral/cell bars prison idea and yes, partially because it is our third album.

Alan – Describe the difference between III and the previous albums.
Vita – There are two main differences between our two previous albums and III – the productions and the lineups. There were different productions at different studios during the recording and mixing sessions of each album and of course different lineups for all three full lengths. Kayt and I wrote all the songs included in Before The End Comes and Sonic Wolves. Personally, I think that some of them could have fit very well in III if they had been played by this line-up and recorded by Trai. 
Kayt - The addition of Nico on guitar and our friend Trai with his recording studio finally gave the band that seventies rock’n’roll sound and touch that we were looking for. Nico is a great guitarist and drummer. We’ve never felt the need to tell him what to play or which band to listen to just to get inspired because he’s very familiar with the hard and prog rock scene from the 70s. We were more free to explore that aspect of our music too, since we all know what sound we are looking for. It’s easier when everyone knows which influences to use, what to borrow and what to leave behind. Working with Trai is very easy. He’s a very experienced sound engineer who listens to your ideas while making you feel very comfortable in his studio. These things made a huge difference.

Alan – How did you get to Argonauta records? After all, it's a pretty big label.
Kayt - We met Gero and Argonauta Records thanks to our former guitarist Ale in 2020. He was interested in releasing a limited edition EP with us, which turned out to be It’s All A Game To Me (released in 2022). It contains two original songs in tribute to our rock’n’roll heroes Lemmy and Cliff Burton. Back then we had this unreleased song, CCKL that was composed right after the Lemmy’s funeral/memorial in 2015, and we always thought it was only good as a single, but Gero upped the ante and made the great proposal of a two-song EP. So, during the Covid lockdown we composed Thee Ace Of Spades for the other side. Luckily, we had finished recording CCKL just a few days before the lockdowns started.
Vita - Gero always expressed interested in continuing a collaboration with Sonic Wolves after the EP so we were happy and honored about his willingness and offer to also release our third album. He’s a friend and a very nice guy who knows what he wants.  
Nico - Over the past few years, thanks to Gero, Argonauta Records took its deserved place in the underground scene, the name is growing as well as the label and the roster thanks to many releases of great bands. He’s doing a great job. I am very happy to work with Gero.

Alan – How long did you work on the album? 6 years? So for you to say, yes, this is the final creation, what had to be done?
Vita - If you look on the dark side six years is a long time, we could have released a new album way earlier but many things happened in between. On the bright side, we have Nico with us now and III wouldn’t have been the same without him. Before releasing the second album Sonic Wolves, the band was already composing new material for III- Shapeshifter and Won’t Be Their Fool were composed in 2017/2018. When we brought a new guitarist in January 2020 we had more new music, but two months later Covid struck with all the lockdowns and restrictions which slowed down the composing process for more than a year. We couldn’t go to the rehearsal room because it was under a different city hall jurisdiction than where we were living.  
Nico – When I joined Sonic Wolves, Kayt and Vita had already enough material for a new album. I also presented a demo with about ten tracks from my old project. So, we choose five songs from Sonic Wolves’ and three from my demo to complete the album. Thanks to this we still have enough material to release a double album if we want.
Kayt – Yes, 6 years was a very long and painful time to not release a new full length album, this is true. Typical band stuff gets in the way sometimes. After the 2018 release of Sonic Wolves and our EU tour that fall, we had to replace our two touring guitarists in 2019, just as we were starting to write this third full length. We subsequently got our then new guitarist(s) ready to record CCKL in 2020 for the EP. Then, as Vita said Covid and the lockdowns hit, throwing us back at least another year, even as we prepared the B side of the EP, Thee Ace of Spades for the studio in 2021. When the May of 2022 release of the EP came around, we played a few final shows with that guitarist and we then had to find a new guitarist- Nico. So, when we started playing with him, we still needed a bit more time to get him up to speed with our setlist for the Monolithix Fest in Sardegna we played in Oct. 2022. Then there was another issue, I had carpal tunnel surgery in March 2023 and unbelievably broke my other wrist in Oct of 2023. So, those two problems contributed slowing us down something fierce. Step by step, among these problems, we’ve regrouped, played live (I played 6 shows with a broken wrist while I waited for surgery), recorded and are already working on what it will be the successor of III. Hopefully we will be back in the studio again within a year. Actually, our current setlist already includes three of these new, unreleased songs. Some have ended up as clips on our Instagram and Facebook pages, if our fans would like a better to get an idea of what’s to come.

Alan – You played everywhere in Italy, but also all over Europe. Where did you play? And during your travels, did you also play in Slovakia or the Czech Republic?
Kayt – Sonic Wolves has unfortunately never played in Czech Republic or Slovakia so far and personally I’ve never been there either. Would love to bring the band there though! We did tour in Europe but only the west/central areas- Germany, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, UK, Switzerland and France. 
Nico – I played in Bratislava once and in Prague last October with Mortuary Drape. In Prague it was a festival crowded with amazing people and the show was absolutely great.
Vita – In my Ufomammut period I played twice in Prague. The second time we had a Czech driver, Zdenek, for that tour who was really cool. I also played at the Brutal Assault festival and there are no words to describe how beautiful that festival is if you’ve never seen it, killer location with very nice people and crew and amazing beer and weed. It was breathtaking.  
I never played in Bratislava but I’ve been there along with Berlin, Prague and Balaton Lake in 1996 during a holiday, riding my chopper and enjoying a new world that was unfortunately denied for Western European citizens, and vice versa, just a few years earlier.  

Alan – For album III, you are 100% planning to perform the work live, and if possible again throughout Europe. What do you have planned so far?
Kayt - We’ve already been playing the new album live in its entirety and we are also working on booking a European tour for this autumn. Unfortunately, lately it’s not so easy to book shows (we are open to booking invitations and tips for shows though- contact our FB or IG if interested). We are ready to play this new release wherever we can, so be watching for us! 
Vita - From 2018 till the end of the pandemic we had a booking agent who suddenly vanished, so as Kayt said, booking has been a hell of a challenge. Kayt’s aforementioned two surgeries on her wrists in March 2023 and February 2024 inevitably slowed the normal band process down even more. It’s as though we got off “the train” we were in and it’s tough to get onboard again. 
Nico – We want to promote III in a proper way playing it live as much as we can.        

Alan – Only marginally, since we have already mentioned the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Do you know any groups from these two countries?
Nico – Yes, I have some LP/CD in my collection of old bands Death / Black Metal from Czech Republic and Slovakia such us Krabathor, Master’s Hammer, Root, Tortura, Torr, Gladiator, and the first pressings are very rare of those albums. I know just a few 70’s rock bands from Czech Republic like Lokomotiv GT or Test but I don’t have the records.
Vita – No one better than Nico could have answered this question, hahaha. Kayt - Thank you Nico \.../ 

Alan – Going to the shows for record III, which gig or festival are you most looking forward to? And why?
Vita - As we mentioned, we don’t have many shows booked presently, but on May 4th we’ll be hosted live on air by the Italian web radio Bang Bang Radio, with 20 minutes of live show and then a long interview. We can’t wait for this show because it’s a livestream and it’s our third Bang Bang Radio appearance. We also have a couple of show and fest confirmations we are waiting on.

Alan – If I only take rock or metal music in general, then Italy is more into melodic metal. How do you play in Italy? Do you have any places or clubs where 70s psychedelic rock is played? After all, young people probably don't look for this style of music.
Vita – Although Italy had a great prog rock scene in seventies and hard core scene in eighties, there is not a strong rock/metal culture compared to almost all the other countries I’ve played. Nevertheless, some metal or hard core bands are known and followed worldwide such us Bulldozer, Negazione, Raw Power, Upset Noise, Death SS, Mortuary Drape, Paul Chain, etc.
Kayt – As a foreigner living in Italy, I can’t say what it was like years ago, but what I see now is a country that loves metal, yes, but also seems to like doom, stoner and psychedelic, just on a smaller scale. Of course, it depends on the bands and venue, but I’ve seen big-ish crowds for this type of music and smaller, but more enthusiastic crowds as well. Sometimes I think I’m too American to really fit in here stylistically, and musically but who cares? It’s all about the music, playing it and enjoying it. We don’t see a whole lot of young people at our shows, and that’s a shame, but that’s the way it is. Unfortunately, in Italy everything has changed after Covid. Many venues had to shut down forever because of the pandemic and the restrictions. Most of the rest are struggling to break even every time they try to organize some events. It’s hard to get a spot. Plus, as Vita mentioned, our booking agent disappeared, especially after he quit Ufommamut, so we are doing our best on our own. It’s not easy though.
Nico - It’s not easy to understand and follow what young people want but I have to say that lately Italy has a vivid black metal scene with a lot of festivals and new young bands.    

Alan – Thanks for the interview, and maybe we'll see each other sometime, somewhere, at an event or a concert.
Vita - Thanks a lot for interviewing us, it was great and a honor. 
Nico - We’ll see you on stage, thanks for the interview.
Kayt - Thank you so much, we appreciate your time and the interview. Cheers!
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