An Interview with HOWL

Interview and Photo by: Timothy Casten
                                                                           


HOWL are a bunch of guys from Ballarat who play a mean fucking show. After winning Triple J's Unearthed High competition last year with their brand of high-powered garage/punk, they released their debut EP in February and are now set to release their second EP 'Brothers In Violence' next week.

How has things changed since you guys won the Triple J Unearthed High comp?
We all have wild coke habits and live in mansions.

Were you guys already playing shows when you were still in high school?

Yeah we'd been playing shows for about three years. We never really went out looking for shows, we just waited for them to get offered to us, so we didn't play a lot. 

The new EP comes out next week, has anything changed with the band and with your sound since the first one was released?

Well I guess this release is a lot more musical, as in, there is so much more melody going on and it's a lot more complex without being math rock or anything. The first EP was really simple, which was the aim, but it's been good to expand our sound a bit with the new release.

What's the writing process like with Howl?

Our songs usually stem from one persons original idea then we kind of write and record at the same time so we can spend time creating and perfecting parts, however some songs come about out of no where when we rehearse. The title track of the EP 'Brothers In Violence' was originally just made on the spot, of course we dramatically changed it after demoing it so many times, but a lot of our materiel has come really spontaneously. The 'Liars (I & II)' off the first EP was originally a live intro to 'Anyone But Us' until we released it had potential to be an actual song.

Who/what are you guys influenced by?

I suppose our biggest influence, especially for this EP, is bands we tour with. I definitely always come off tour really inspired to write, and there are so many great bands going around Australia right now, so it makes it pretty easy to learn off each other and still remain original. 

You guys have played a lot of shows around Australia, where's your favourite place to play?

That's definitely a tough one. A lot of our friends and their bands live in Brisbane so it's always good to catch up with them and play shows to a lot of familiar faces, Adelaide's always a huge party and I guess it's always great to come home and play at Karova in Ballarat. It's always just dependent on the vibe of the show, it's a lottery.

Any news on a full LP release any time soon?

It's on the cards but will be a while off, maybe a year or so. However there's already a mini library of tracks floating round which will most likely make an appearance on the album, it's definitely going to be different.

'Brothers In Violence' EP comes out September 3 2010 through SHOCK/I OH YOU.