MATTHEW GREYWOLF Says POWERWOLF 'Explored New Ground' On 'The Sacrament Of Sin'

Finnish journalist Janne Vuorela recently conducted an interview with guitarist Matthew Greywolf (real name: Benjamin Buss) and keyboardist Falk Maria Schlegel of German metallers POWERWOLF. You can watch the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the band’s forthcoming “The Sacrament Of Sin” studio album:

Matthew: It’s the most diverse we’ve done so far. It’s an album that has a lot of variation of, I think, what POWERWOLF is all about. It’s still a typical POWERWOLF album in a way, but, it is like, we have explored a lot of new elements. It’s more dense and more detailed than what we’ve done in the past.”

On the three-year wait between 2015’s “Blessed & Possessed” and “The Sacrament Of Sin”:

Falk: “I would say it was a decision we made after the ‘Blessed & Possessed’ album because we wanted to play more live shows and do more touring and everything like that. We had a release in between, ‘The Metal Mass’ DVD, so that gave us more time to have more influences and stuff like that. Moreover, it is important POWERWOLF is onstage and we have to enlarge our territories and to play other countries. But, I think in the end, it was good for the songwriting to have a little bit more time than the typical two years [in between] releasing albums. I’m sure that you can hear that on ‘The Sacrament Of Sin’.”

On the writing and recording of “The Sacrament Of Sin”:

Matthew: “Writing-wise, I would say it was one of the most exciting songwriting sessions we ever had. I already mentioned we had a little wider approach on the idea of the songs and also on the elements we used, like I said, we explored some new ground. We used way more and more detailed orchestrations than we’ve ever done. As well, for the first time in our career, we changed producers, which was pretty exciting for us. I mean, we did six albums with Fredrik Nordström. We did this because it just fitted and we’ve been super-happy with what we did, but lately, we felt like it was too much of a routine to work with the same team over and over again. We knew each other pretty well, so, you didn’t ask questions anymore. It was like, ‘That is the guitar sound. That is how the organ is supposed to sound.’ It was super-exciting to work and just start with a blank page again with a new producer with Jens Bogren. We didn’t know each other, so we started discussing every little prick in our sound. It was very good because that felt a bit like a reinvention process. This process, there was much more space to fit some new elements in between what was already there. Yeah, I would say we have managed to enlarge our territory sound-wise.”

On what inspired POWERWOLF during the making of “The Sacrament Of Sin”:

Matthew: “I would say there is no direct inspiration in means that I could tell you there was a movie or there was an album or anything that inspired us. I would rather say, that after seven albums with almost the same lineup — we just had one lineup change in 15 years of existence — we are inspiring each other in a way. Like, Falk with the way he plays the organ. When I write a melody line I know, or I have in my head how Atilla [Dorn, vocals] will sound. All of that is, I think, the most inspiring thing. Then, there was another inspiring thing which wasn’t planned to be like that. For our previous album, ‘Blessed & Possessed’, we did a bonus album where we covered ten of our favorite heavy metal songs. That had a range that was pretty large, from Gary Moore to AMON AMARTH. Doing this project, we had a lot of fun. We realized all of these very different songs, in the end, sounded like POWERWOLF indeed when we brought in our typical ingredients, like Attila‘s way of singing, the organ, our way of playing the guitar, and, we took that inspiration over to the songwriting sessions. Like, ‘Alright, we can, in fact, go for a song that is made based on piano, like ‘Where The Wild Wolves Have Gone’ and we can make it sound like POWERWOLF.'”

On first single “Demons Are A Girl’s Best Friend”:

Matthew: “I would say, in a way, it’s an untypical POWERWOLF song. It’s a song that has a rock vibe, stadium rock vibe, it’s got a very good sing-a-long. I dare say, it’s a more ‘lightweight’ number. It’s not that much of a heavy and massive [song].”

Falk: “But, there’s a lot of organ parts in there. I would say that it’s the song with the most organ parts in it. Probably, it’s a little bit ‘back to the roots.’ It’s a little bit in the sense, because of the ‘Cobra King’ song we did. It has this catchy melody and we really could imagine when we wrote this song to perform it onstage. From the beginning, that was the clear vision of it. We decided to use this song. I’m super-happy.”

Matthew: “For me, personally, it’s exciting to have chosen an untypical song for the first single. We could have taken a more obvious song like the opening song ‘Fire & Forgive’, which is a typical POWERWOLF song in a way. But, ‘Demons Are A Girl’s Best Friend’ are a bit out of what the expectation will be. For me, it’s pretty exciting to release the first single being a rather untypical one. Let’s see what happens.”

“The Sacrament Of Sin” will be released on July 20 via Napalm Records. The follow-up to 2015’s “Blessed & Possessed” was recorded at Fascination Street Studios in Örebro, Sweden with producer Jens Bogren, who has previously worked with KREATOR, DRAGONFORCE, SEPULTURA and PARADISE LOST, among others.