With their third studio album, Half Living Things, metalcore favourites Alpha Wolf have reached a new level of ferocity and cohesion of sound and band chemistry.
Half Living Things balances ambition with elevation in sound, the Melbourne-based band leaning into their strengths as musicians and writers, bringing out the best of each other’s individual talents in making a record that is fun, brutal and striking.
Along with making their new record, Alpha Wolf have continued to expand their grip on the scene with the return of their own curated festival, CVLTFEST, in 2024.
Originally held in Melbourne in 2022, the festival made its way to Brisbane at the beginning of the year, boasting a lineup that featured some international genre favourites in Japan’s Crossfaith and Paledusk, local legends Ocean Grove, as well as perfectly selected Australian names like Crave Death and Diamond Construct, who will undoubtedly remain on radars as the year continues to roll out.
Before they headlined the event, Alpha Wolf vocalist Lochie Keogh and guitarist Sabian Lynch sat down with Tone Deaf to chat about CVLTFEST, the growth of the band, and the impact they want Half Living Things to have on crowds in Australia and beyond.
Alpha Wolf’s Half Living Things is out now through Greyscale Records / SharpTone Records.
Tone Deaf: Take me back to the beginning of CVLTFEST. What kicked off this idea, to put on a festival where you get to showcase not only the bands you like, but also the bands who have such a strong standing in the community?
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Sabian Lynch: I think it all started with this silly idea we had during lockdown. We started a Patreon that we called our “cvlt”, that’s in our social media handle. I also do graphic design, Scottie [Simpson] does merch and recording, I do video as well – we wanted this “cvlt” branding to take off in our world.
We haven’t done it yet, but we want to have a warehouse where we can do promo photos, videos, recording – keep everything in-house. It sparked the idea of CVLTFEST, Alpha Wolf’s very own festival. What better idea than to bring our friends who we have toured with internationally back home?
It’s fun to see those bands do their own tours and then come together to do one massive festival with us that we headline and brand ourselves. We have total creative control with the festival, it’s really fun to bring things together.
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Lochie Keogh: It’s sick. Not only do we have to organise the festival, but we’re also helping to organise the rest of the tours for the other bands on the lineup as well. It’s great to get some tours going, make some money and just do it!
SL: There’s a hole in the market at the moment for these technically smaller festivals. We grew up going to all-ages festivals of this size, seeing all the cool local bands who were making waves at the time. You’ve got the big festivals, the 30,000-cap festivals – this isn’t that.
It probably won’t be until we can pull those sorts of numbers, but we’re totally happy with this completely in-house organised event. Friends are running stalls, selling the stuff they do creatively. It’s a really cool vibe. It’s not Download, it’s not Knotfest… it’s CVLFEST!
LK: It’s a lot more personal. Everyone knows one another.
TD: It’s built on a foundation of trust, from the ground up. With you guys curating it, the bands who are involved, obviously you have a relationship with them from other tours. And then on a punter level it’s cool, because you know they’re investing because they believe in the same message you do. I feel like that’s what makes events like this have legs and have longevity.
LK: I want people to want to come to CVLTFEST just because it’s happening, regardless of the bands. People just want to go to the festival, even if there are no bands they know are playing, because they’ll get FOMO otherwise. We want to have an event like that.
SL: We’re still ironing out the kinks. It’s still only one stage at this point, we’re totally happy with that. We don’t like people getting too tired and days like this can drag. We’re happy with how everything is running so far; we’re in our second year now and we’re looking forward to what we can plan for the future.
We don’t want to cement ourselves in one location. We’re heavily Melbourne-based but our drummer [Mitch Fogarty] is from Brisbane; we always have crazy shows in Brisbane so we knew this year had to be in Brisbane, for that reason. They’ve always been so good to us here.
TD: And being in this specific venue [Eatons Hill Hotel], people are travelling to get here!
SL: It’s crazy! It’s cool to see peers flying from everywhere in Australia to be here for this, it’s wild. It’s what we wanted. We didn’t want to travel this festival around with three dates, we’d rather just have one show and have everyone come together, catch up with everyone they haven’t seen. Internet friends they haven’t met before, they can meet here.
TD: Let’s talk about this album – congratulations first of all! Sonically, it’s exciting for me to hear how cohesive the Alpha Wolf sound has become in recent years. How does the record hit for you, now you’re out of the creative process? Does it hold the same significance?
SL: Oh, always. So many years ago, when we were finding our feet, we didn’t truly know the sound we were going for. We’ve been touring so hard lately, we’ve really found ourselves and what works for us. We like to have fun, we like to play off each other. We definitely were writing towards the live moments, because we love being a really fun live band. Getting to write to that, knowing that these songs would be delivered so well live, makes us love the songs more.
It makes us look forward to performing the songs for the next two years. We kinda get married to the album for the two years of touring we’re going to do. There’s nothing worse than putting out music you don’t want to play. We really look forward to switching up the set; we have to sacrifice some of the old songs we really love, for these new songs that we really love. Across our music, this album especially, there’s something for everyone.
We like moshing as much as we love jumping; as much as we love crowd surfing and people just singing along. We’ve got the mosh parts, we’ve got the sing-along parts; that, to us, is what we love seeing when we perform live. We write for that.
LK: We always try to curate. We definitely are a ‘record’ band, but people definitely get it when they see us live. People might not understand, and then they come to a show and go, “Oh, that’s it!”
SL: You ask someone for their favourite Alpha Wolf song and it’s different across the board.
TD: What you’ve done with this record is make something really versatile – there is this really cool world of sounds where nothing feels out of place. Even the album tracks, on their own, can stand strong individually – which is hard to do sometimes.
SL: I think that just comes down to us as people. I, personally, am a big sucker for giant choruses. Someone else might be really into heavy mosh parts. We all love each thing; we all have favourite songs as well.
We’ve always been a heavy band but someone is going to have a favourite song that is a “soft” song, and then someone will have a favourite that is abysmally heavy! We’re going to cater for all these audiences. We don’t need everyone to like every single song. If you like a handful, you’re still going to like the live set. You never know what to expect from us when we’re writing.
TD: This isn’t your first go around when it comes to the album making process. I wonder, because there are so many cool little threads that tie this one together, how has making and producing this record changed the Alpha Wolf relationship to music overall?
SL: This time around, we changed it up a bit. Our drummer wrote a lot of guitar riffs on the album. He’s really excited to showcase his songwriting in that aspect, and we’re very excited because he brought a whole new approach to the writing process. It keeps it exciting, keeps it fresh. We’re not bored of ourselves yet. We’re very excited to show off new music. Sometimes you’ll meet people who don’t want to show you their stuff, because they’re nervous. But we’re like, “You have to listen to our new music, because we love it!”
TD: Tell me about those sessions. You’ve got a drummer writing guitar parts, you’re stepping into some creative territory that may be less well-worn. Can you describe the dynamic? Because it feels like you guys have always been supportive of each other.
LK: Literally it’s like, the more material, the better. I can’t play a single note on any instrument whatsoever, I have absolutely no technical skill, but if I have figured out how to create some sound that the guys enjoy somehow, they’ll take it and do something with it.
SL: We really thrive on a stress-free, relaxed vibe when we’re writing music. Most of it happened during lockdown, everyone behind their computers just making stuff. Then, even when we were recording, we would record our own vocals; if Lochie would come in one day and he’s not feeling it, we’d go home. But if we were on someone’s paid time in a professional studio, it would be so much more stressful.
LK: That half day would still be full cost. You’d feel the pressure.
SL: Yeah, if you had to deliver all the album’s vocals in two weeks, that’s stress! We just love the stress-free environment. Drums, guitar, bass, we can get through that pretty quickly. It’s all written. But vocals, it’s a whole new thing. If the vocals are a bit raspy one day, or if you’ve woken up feeling bad…
LK: There are so many things that can factor into it. It’s the one thing that everyone in the band has an equal opinion on. It’s not the most important part, but it’s almost like the glue that binds everything else together. Everybody needs to be happy with it, whereas I’m not going to tell Mitch [Fogarty] how to do a drum part! I want everyone to be down with the vocals.
SL: Ultimately, it creates a better product in the end. We’re never at each other’s throats over things like this. I guess the hardest part about the process is having too much material, cutting what might not be as good as the rest. Sometimes that can result in butthurt feelings, but we all know it’s for the greater good. Ultimately, now we’ve committed ourselves to the twelve songs on the album, everyone is happy across the board.
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TD: Is there music that wasn’t included, not necessarily because you weren’t feeling it, but because it just didn’t fit this particular package?
SL: Yeah, there were two songs we recorded guitar and drums for, but we were never 100% happy with how the vocals were delivered, or the lyrics, the placement. It just didn’t seem to fit. They still exist, but we don’t know what to do with them. We could revisit them later, put some new and fresh ideas onto it.
LK: We don’t write heaps, we’re not a band that is constantly putting material down. If we have anything in the back pocket, it’s good to have it just as a reference. Even if I am feeling creative, I find it hard to write lyrics to nothing. I need some sort of beat, sound, whatever. If I’m feeling inspired, I’ll listen to that; it always goes back to this “reject” song, so it’s a hard pocket to get out of!
SL: You also need to know when to say stop. It’s something our producer Lance, who is also our front of house engineer, is good for. He can tell us when a song is done, and when we need to stop overcooking it. You can keep adding layers, you can keep adding vocals and everything, but he’s often the man to tell us when it’s done. We’ll come back to it a week later and be like, “Yep, you were right.”
LK: He’ll also tell us when it’s not done!
TD: It’s good to have that perspective – someone who knows the band on that intimate level but can also be objective.
SL: Yep. We’ve written songs that would refer to other songs, and that’s totally okay. That other song may be someone else’s favourite, and if we don’t think we’ve done a good enough job…we can always just write another song.
All those songs are going to be someone’s favourite, ultimately, so we don’t get too hung up on ourselves if one song doesn’t deliver as much as another. It’s probably still going to be someone’s favourite.
TD: Totally. With this album, I feel like for people who have been rocking with Alpha Wolf from the beginning, there’s something there for them to see the growth, but also it feels like a graduation. For people who are coming to you for the first time, this is a cool gateway to discover everything else.
LK: It’s just like with CVLTFEST, we’re just wanting to expand. We’re not trying to sell out, we’re not trying to do country music or whatever, but we back ourselves hard and we want to put ourselves in front of as many people as possible. Whoever takes to it, takes to it. We back all of our records, some to different extents, but we always want to be doing something new.
SL: It comes down to live shows as well. We did a really cool tour in the US last year with Motionless in White, and their crowds are ginormous. We knew deep in our hearts that only a small percentage of people in the room would know our songs, so we had to impress the audience. We had to treat the performance almost as an ad for our band.
That grew so quickly, we gained so many Motionless in White fans; it’s all been so lovely, just because they fucked with what they saw that night and then they checked us out, and liked the music. So everything, from the music to the show, if you can reach a wider audience, you’ve won.
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TD: We can’t wait to see how this album comes through live, but just to see how it changes over the next year, even. The chemistry between all of you as performers is easily one of my favourite things about Alpha Wolf, but it’s exciting as a punter, because you can tell you love music and the craft.
SL: We love that we can vibe off each other in the live performances. We don’t need the tough-guy act, where we pretend the others don’t exist. We like to enjoy each other’s company and have a vibe. If someone screws up a song, a note, or if we fall over, we laugh about it. It doesn’t destroy the performance at all; we’re not embarrassed! It’s just part of the fun!
Alpha Wolf 2024 Australian Tour
With Devil Wears Prada, Invent Animate, thrown
Tickets via www.destroyalllines.com
August 1st
Metropolis, Fremantle (18+)
August 2nd
Chelsea Heights Hotel, Chelsea Heights (18+)
August 3rd
The Forum, Melbourne (Sold Out)
August 4th
Hindley Street Music Hall, Adelaide (Lic/AA)
August 7th
Liberty Hall, Sydney (Lic/AA)
August 8th
LIberty Hall, Sydney (Sold Out)
August 9th
King St Hotel, Newcastle (Sold Out)
August 10th
Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane (Lic/AA)
