POWERWOLF Guitarist Talks 'Blessed & Possessed', Guitar Work, Bonus Covers Album

Anthony Morgan of Metal Forces recently conducted an interview with POWERWOLF guitarist Matthew Greywolf. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On writing a follow-up to "Preachers Of The Night":

"'Preachers Of The Night' was not only our most successful album but also an album which we still absolutely love, so it was quite hard to start coming up with new songs that would do justice to the legacy of this album. It took quite a while until we had written the first song, but the first song we finished was the title track in fact — 'Blessed & Possessed'. We realized that we could still do it; when this one was written, the rest of the songwriting started flowing."

On the lyrical content for "Blessed & Possessed":

"A good point to start with is the album title 'Blessed & Possessed', which displays the ambiguity between…. Let's say 'blessed' being a metaphor for a religious life or a life defined by a set of rules and morals, and 'possessed' as the opposite — like instinctive behaviour. We kind of used this concept on a lot of songs, like on 'Sacramental Sister' for example, which is a story about a nun being torn between a pile of lies and sexual desire. Then as well though, you can relate 'Blessed & Possessed' to POWERWOLF because it describes how we are as a band. If you see 'blessed' as the epic element — the classic element within the music — and 'possessed' as the heavy metal side, the wild side of the music, it's a very good way to describe how POWERWOLF are. Especially the 'possessed' kind of thing is a thought that's very important for us, because we are possessed by what we do and heavy metal fans in general are possessed by heavy metal. It's more than just listening to heavy metal; it's living heavy metal, it's being possessed by heavy metal. There are several levels of how this album title relates to the band and the topics on the album."

On his guitar work for "Blessed & Possessed":

"I'm not the kind of guitar player who needs some exposure for my playing abilities or something when writing songs. I don't even consider myself a guitar player. When writing songs, I just feel like I'm a part of the whole thing. When it comes to working out guitars, I try to be as song efficient as possible. I don't need a big solo spot or something in any song. This time, what was very important for me sound-wise was to get a lot of tone. Not distortion per se and not the fattest guitar sound ever, but a very decent tone on it – a tone within the distorted guitar. Something really traceable. I wanted a guitar that sounds musical. Not brutal, but musical.

"Sometimes you get productions where the guitars sound like razors. It's just like cutting, but there's not much of a tone in it. There's no bottom to the guitars, no body. What we tried to achieve is to have guitars that are really heavy; not heavy in terms of starting to hurt your ears, but heavy in terms of the fact that it's got a good body."

On "Blessed & Possessed"'s bonus covers disc:

"It's not just a bonus disc. It's a completely second album. There's actually two digipaks released within a box, and the album is called 'Metallium Nostrum'. We have put ten cover versions on that album, which are cover versions of songs that are influential to us. The idea was not to cover ten big heavy metal hits, but to cover songs that are personally important for us. It was a lot of fun doing this project, definitely. We recorded them after the record. It was actually after we had finished the mix for 'Blessed & Possessed', we realized that we should realize this idea. We had the idea for this covers album in mind for several years, but it never worked. This time it was like we do it now or never, so you could say that right when we came back from Sweden — where we mixed 'Blessed & Possessed' — we just jumped into the studio to record 'Metallium Nostrum'."

Read the entire interview at Metal Forces.