At Progressive Rock Journal, we’re always eager to highlight independent voices in the Rock and Metal underground, and today we have the pleasure to chat with Belgian act WOLV. Known for their unique mix of Occult Rock, Metal, Stoner, Doom and a good dose of devastating Rock‘n’Roll energy, the band recently unveiled their long-awaited debut
full-length Endgame. With an intense and emotionally charged concept behind it, “Endgame” reflects both the raw power and the atmospheric depth of WOLV’s sound. We caught up with the band to discuss their origins, musical vision, and what the future holds.
Greetings and welcome to Progressive Rock Journal! To begin, could you tell us how the project was born and what were the early days of the band like? How did WOLV take shape as a band and as a musical identity?
[GARG] – Hi, thanks for having us, we really appreciate it! The band actually started a pretty long time ago, somewhere 2014-ish, I’m not even sure because there were quite a few bumps along the road. Wolv started out as a jam between me and my good friend Arne, we shared the same taste in stoner and doom metal and picked up the idea of making that kind of music ourselves.
[RUBEN] – ‘Wolv’ is a slow project. At the time, we all had our own projects going on. Ben was playing crustpunk with bands like Pesticide and Altered State. Niels and I were in a heavy stoner/grunge-inspired band named Spillshot. Arne (Niels’ brother) and Garg were hiding in a basement somewhere, heavily infusing Jack Daniels’, Black Sabbath, Uncle
Acid and Motörhead, laying the foundations for the band.
[GARG] – I started working on some tunes and songs. Arne’s brother Niels joined the band on drums and I invited Ruben to join on bass. We all lived quite close to each other in that period, so that made it way easier to rehearse regularly.
[RUBEN] – First rehearsals were in Arne and Niels’ mother’s laundry room. Somehow many bands had gone there since the 90’s. Songs were in drop C tuning, slow and murderously heavy. Arne brought great inspiration, which Garg managed to form into great songs. A great tandem, their interaction was motivating me.
[GARG] – Unfortunately, at one point Arne moved to another country for a few years, which caused the project to come to a standstill for a while. A few years later I met Lisa. I let her listen to some of my tracks and she said that it would be a shame not to do something with it. We also shared the same interest in music and she happened to be able to hold a tune, so I asked her to take up the microphone.
[RUBEN] – Yeah, we really needed a singer, Garg had written all the melodies and even lyrics, but it felt like the band was dying at that point. It was frustrating, because I knew we were sitting on good stuff. I was blown away the first time Lisa sang with Wolv, she really completed it. Finally, the songs really took shape…
[GARG] – With Arne back and Lisa on vocals this time, we found a new momentum and joy in playing again so I got back to write new material. At one point we were looking for a new rehearsal space and found it at Ben’s place, he actually joined the band too, so we were a combo of 3 guitar players.
[RUBEN] – Garg wrote some extra parts and the third guitar really created a wall of sound. Those were the high days, a band with no name, rocking it out only for the sake of darkness! Arne was really active in the diy-scene, with his band ‘Last Legion Alive’ and also organising tours, promoting other bands across Europe. When he formed his current
project (((DOLCH))), he moved to Germany. Some months later, he decided to leave Wolv. We still hate him.
[RUBEN] – ‘Wolv’ is a slow project, carefully crafted over the past decade or so. At the time, we all had our own projects going on. Ben was playing crustpunk with bands like Pesticide and Altered State. Ruben and Niels were in a heavy stoner/grunge-inspired band named Spillshot. Arne (Niels’ brother) and Garg (Johan) were hiding in a basement somewhere, heavily infusing Black Sabbath, Uncle Acid and Motörhead, evaporating what remained. There, they laid the foundations for the first Wolv EP (which is until now un-released and un-recorded). Songs were in drop C tuning, slow and murderously heavy. Arne brought great inspiration, which Garg managed to form into great songs. At the time
it was the four of us: Garg and Arne on guitars, Niels on drums, Ruben on bass. We felt we had something good going on, but were missing vocals. Not vocals, Garg had written all the melodies, we needed a singer. The following year, Garg met Lisa. I remember being blown away the first time she sang with Wolv, she really completed it. Nothing but ‘yeah!’. We were still looking for a rehearsal space and ended up at Ben’s place. We could practice there, if he could play along. Garg wrote some extra parts and the third guitar really created a wall of sound. Those were the high days, a band with no name, rocking it out only for the sake of darkness! Arne was really active in the diy-scene, with his band ‘Last Legion Alive’ and also organising tours, promoting other bands across Europe. When he formed his current project (((DOLCH))), he moved to Germany. Some months later, he decided to leave Wolv. We still hate him. extended No, of course we are all about love, but for the band it was an honest setback. Garg found a new writing mate in Lisa and Ben tried every distortion pedal out there to fill the gap. We recorded a demo and Garg – again – wrote some new material (he also released a solo album in that period! <https://gargolian.bandcamp.com/album/the-black-tape>). In the meantime, on the other side of the moon, we were also playing a lot locally with a fun-fairy greengrass americana band called ‘The Ballroom Bogards’. (imagine Lisa holding a chicken, Garg strumming a cigarbox, Niels playing brushes on a suitcase, Ruben singing tenor and Ben dancing his ass off in the crowd! <>) In the end, the happy masquerade faded out. Wolv turned out to be the musically more challenging and interesting project and got our full attention. We decided to go all in. “If we want our music out there, we need to make a record…”. Dunk!Records had rehearsal rooms for rent in our area, so we happily joined in and practiced weekly there for over two more years before finally booking the studio. We ended up recording 9 tracks in two days, which would be produced over the following year in what we now proudly call
‘Endgame’.
Your sound blends elements of Doom, Stoner, Occult Rock, Metal, and what you describe as ‘epic glam and total destruction.’ How would you personally define your style, and how has it evolved over the years?
[GARG] – I’ve always found it hard to label our music. It contains styles of music we all really like. For me it’s all about the general feeling, if a riff sounds good it doesn’t really matter what style it is, as long as it doesn’t get too complicated or far fetched… So yeah, Wolv’s style is indeed a blend of different genres. It actually started off somewhat heavier with guitars tuned a whole step down (C), but those songs were never recorded properly. Along the way I started writing stuff in standard tuning due to lack of my C-tuned guitar: at one point, I left it in the rehearsal room and I only had the standard tuned guitar at my disposal and kind of stuck to it. Maybe it blends even better with Lisa’s vocals. We are thinking about recording those first songs somewhere in the future though and put them out as an EP or something, we’ll see…
[RUBEN] – That’s something we find hard to say ourselves, we don’t try to fit a genre really, it’s an homage to what we love, musically. Our sound has changed over the past ten years, so have the circumstances. ((Music should be there to make the world a better place, ease the burden, if even the slightest bit. If everyone can manage to find a song
that does that, we’ve gone a long way.)) Garg writes all our music and lyrics, so it is truly his expression we perform and support as a band. The music is somewhat theatrical, mainly there to amplify the message, which is dark but confrontationally realistic, sometimes shedding light, sometimes shadows or sometimes blunt darkness. Musically,
we do try to bring variation into our set, without breaking the flow or mood, but sweet dreams might spin off into unpredictable eruption at any given moment. It feels easy listening, but before you know, it hits you and you just get sucked in. And for some shit there’s just no words, then there is the riff… Music can be dark, but to me, music should
always be hopeful and Wolv has this ‘silver lining’ to it, it’s real, but not suffocating. Emo warning – Maybe let’s just call it heavy metal music: it grabs you like a pressure blanket, lays on you heavily, but in the end you rely on it, because it turns something harsh into something soothing.
Every band has key influences that shape their creative direction. Which artists or records would you say left the deepest mark on WOLV’s sonic vision? Are there any non-musical inspirations you consider important in your writing process?
[GARG] – For me it’s the love of music in general. I listen to all sorts of genres, as long as it hits you right, right? Inspiration comes through all sorts of things, a walk in the forest can give so much, you know… Musically, I remember when I first heard Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana and it hit me so hard, at that exact moment I knew I wanted to do
something like that… Along came bands like Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, RHCP, Pantera, Paradise Lost, Sepultura, Metallica. They all helped in shaping who I am today as a guitarplayer. Inspiration for Wolv came later on with newer bands such as Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats, Acid Kind, Windhand, Graveyard, Kadavar, Sleep, etc…
[RUBEN] – Black Sabbath, Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, early Metallica, Sepultura, Spinal Tap, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd to name a few obvious ones that go from gut to gut. Of course the world as we see and experience today, greatly affects the message we bring. Wolv is about how we see and treat our environment and each other. We try not to be political and speak with poetry and metaphors, but when the world is in such pain and its rulers so blatantly, shamelessly ignore it, it is hard not to raise the barricades. I’m glad Wolv has this air of realism to it. I’m also dying to play a happy song – about mushrooms and unicorns.
Let’s move to “Endgame,” your first full-length album. You’ve been working in the shadows for quite some time before releasing this opus. When did you feel the time was finally right to bring this album to life?
[GARG] Actually, the music has been alive for, at least, the past 5 years, and we did an attempt to record some songs previously but we weren’t satisfied with the result, so we took some time to get better and tighter. But also… We’re all a bit of procrastinators, so yeah, it took us a while to finally get it done properly i.e. in a real studio with a real producer 🙂
[RUBEN] – I think around the pandemic we felt we were ready to release something or at least we were eager to, so that was a major setback. On the other hand, it gave us time, oxygen and motivation to finetune our sound and make some new material. It’s like hatching a dragon’s egg, it only comes out when it’s time. The central theme of “Endgame” revolves around the tragic story of the wolf Naya, and through it, a reflection on mankind’s destructive tendencies.
How did this story come to inspire the lyrical concept of the record? Was it an immediate choice or something that
grew along the writing process?
[GARG] The idea originated with our first guitarist, Arne, who wanted to explore the theme of humanity’s destruction of nature. This concept runs through most of the lyrics, where nature is portrayed as a unified, sentient entity speaking in the first person—seeking revenge on mankind for the damage inflicted upon her. In this context, the wolf symbolizes that very force: a mother figure defending her home and offspring with primal strength. Naya came into the picture a bit later. She was one of the first wolves to set foot in Flemish territory in recent times. As you might expect, her arrival sparked fear and resistance among locals. Tragically, she was shot by a farmer. But there’s a hopeful side to the story—her descendants are now roaming these lands once again, even more than before 🙂 And she also inspired me to write Murder In The Woods.
[RUBEN] – As any artistic process, this is something that grows in the heart first and then comes to mind. The stories we just weave around it later, to make it fit on pages. At least I do. I’m bad at understanding song lyrics, even in my own language. It’s all mama-appelsap (*mondegreen) to me. I just make up the rest of the story as the music goes
along, it validates the dragons, they come in the instrumental parts. I think the main theme is dealing with disappointment, loss, grievance, guilt and betrayal. The story of Naya was all of that in our backyard, in such a simplistic yet describing way.
Musically, “Endgame” strikes a balance between raw heaviness and atmospheric moments. How did you approach the songwriting and arrangement process for the album? Was there a deliberate effort to merge different dynamics into the record’s flow?
[GARG] Not really—most of the time, I’m just noodling on the guitar when a good riff suddenly comes out. From there, I build on it and shape it into something more structured. Sometimes a riff or an idea just pops into my head, and I start arranging it into a full song. Once I get going, I’m usually unstoppable. What I do consciously, though, is try to give each song a twist—some kind of unexpected turn, a downfall, or something that breaks from the norm. That element of surprise, combined with the more accessible, easy-listening parts, is really what defines the sound of Endgame.
[RUBEN] – Many bands in the genre these days just sound like they play ‘one song’, we try to be musically approachable but not predictable. Looking at the diverse characters in our band, there’s practically no other way it could go. Luckily we have Garg, who does all the songwriting, keeping a common thread, but he also does a great job considering the band’s input and capabilities. He makes it seem so casual, but I’m sure ‘Endgame’ was written to be an album with some weight to it, something to consume as a whole, not just a collection of songs. It’s all real moments and feelings, bundled as they came along and needed a place. That’s why it took time, that’s why it has ups and downs and why it fits.
The album was entirely self-produced, recorded, and released independently. How important was this DIY approach for you, and what were the greatest challenges you faced during the making of “Endgame”?
[GARG] As I mentioned before, we tend to procrastinate a bit, so finding a label got pushed aside—just when we really should’ve been going all in on it. Plus, the whole process of recording an album and getting it out into the world is still pretty new to us. Luckily, Ben, Lisa, and I also play in a melodic crust metal/punk band called Pesticide, which is deeply rooted in the DIY scene. That background has definitely helped—we’re used to handling things ourselves and making it work on our own terms.
[RUBEN] – There is a massive amount of music out there and competition is just really tough. We are lucky enough to have a company in our town that has a studio and presses vinyl (Dunk!Records) so somehow it seemed obvious to ‘just do it’. We did try to contact labels, but going solo gave us full artistic freedom to spend all our money on a double 180gr lp with great fiery colors, custom artwork and all that snazzy stuff we wanted. We waited long for this and had our minds made up about what the result should be like. There was no room for compromise, we were doing this, period. We could work from our hometown at our own pace, but of course also with our own investment, responsibilities and no label to back us up. The key of DIY is learning as you go and we sure learned a lot. Every choice comes at a cost. Lack of deadlines and timing were the main issues. (The latter was fixed using a click-track in the studio.)
The physical editions look stunning, especially the double vinyl with screen-printed artwork. Could you tell us more about the visual side of “Endgame” and your collaboration with Lisa for the linocut artwork?
[GARG] Thanks so much! I actually run a small screenprinting business myself (mainly printing on textiles) but I’ve also screenprinted a few records for other clients in the past, so taking that step for our own release came pretty naturally.
The idea really took shape when we were faced with the limitations of vinyl, how much music can actually fit on one album. We had more songs than a standard LP could hold, so we decided to go for a double LP: three sides of music, with the fourth side featuring a screenprinted linocut. Lisa did an amazing job with the design, and we’re genuinely proud
of how it turned out.
[RUBEN] – Lisa is a genuinely wonderful artist (check Aideen, her jewellery and drawings!). She had this idea for an artwork in the ‘handmade’ style of our logo. After bringing a sketch to one of the rehearsals, we all loved it and wanted to use it for the record. Garg had the idea and skill to do the screen-print. The idea was there all the time, but somehow Lisa and her muse failed to connect (wtf is procrastination?). In the meantime, with the clock ticking to finish production, Garg eagerly worked on the rest of the artwork and Niels evolved into a true manager, raining hell on poor Lisa, raising the
pressure to finish the linocut and start up the presses. I think in the end the stars must have aligned, because the result was well worth the wait! (and now I know how printing stuff works) – That’s how the whole thing came to be. It’s like laying a dragon’s egg, every day you have to push harder or it’ll never pop out…
“Endgame” clocks in at nearly an hour of music, across nine intense tracks. Is there a song or moment on the record you feel particularly represents the soul of WOLV at this stage of your journey?
[GARG] – All songs have a different mood, so it’s kind of hard to tell which one represents the spirit of Wolv, but if I have to pick one.. maybe Acid Reigns…
[RUBEN] – ‘Murder In The Woods’ basically tells the whole story in one song: channeling anger and fury, transforming it into acceptance and transcendence. If you have an hour, listen to the album, if you have ten minutes, listen to that track.
Shifting to the live dimension — are you currently planning any concerts or tours to promote “Endgame”? How would you describe a WOLV show to someone who has never seen you live?
[GARG] One of our very first shows we played in our hometown, we couldn’t get a sound technician, every technician we knew had business elsewhere. Ben, who happens to be a sound technician as well, had to play and mix us live at the same time. It speaks for itself that it didn’t go as planned. On top of that Ben broke a string during the second song, so it really didn’t go as smooth as it should have.
[RUBEN] – “You gotta believe in it, man…” – Again, competition is tough, there’s many great bands out there. We rehearse as frequently as we can and play at every opportunity to stay sharp. Without a crowd we’re just shouting at the datalines, but it takes a lot of effort to get booked as an unknown band. At live shows, I try to be very focussed but also full of energy, putting it in every note. We play the entire album in a serene setting and a variety of people seem to catch our drift and like to ride along. No nonsense, just us being us, honest, fragile. At this point, you really feel how ‘Endgame’ works as an album and how dynamic it is. No E-string no nothing though…
Speaking of live experiences, what have been some of your most memorable moments on stage so far? Any highlights or special gigs you’d like to share with our readers?
[GARG] – Honestly we are not that experienced in playing for a live audience. Of course we play at small venues now and again and even though we enjoy it, I must admit that we still have a long road ahead of us. But in order to reach a certain goal, gain trust and self-esteem on stage you need to be able to play live a lot. We still have some things to learn. We’re not used to it, not with a band like Wolv anyway. We have a few upcoming gigs in Belgium but we noticed that most venues are almost fully booked for this year, so we’ll have to see how things work out.
[RUBEN] – I think we just made a record we truly love here, that’s what I remember. It’s out there, we did it, we tried to prove we’re up to it. If the people like it, shows will follow. Playing live is something I love to do, because so much time and effort goes into this, but when you are there with the crowd and the band and you feel the connection… You know it’s worth it. I’m not good with lots of people, so after the show I float away and enjoy the adrenaline-rush. ((Townes Van Zandt said: “If I could write one song that changes one person’s life …”)) ((We all love music because we hate to be alone and music brings people together. And also, adrenaline-rush, cool hosts that cook good food, free booze, new friends, … Live shows are always very motivating, both preparing for them and then getting the pay-back during and after the show.))
Belgium has always had a vibrant underground scene with strong names in Doom and Heavy Music. How do you perceive the current scene around you? Do you feel part of a specific movement or more like outsiders navigating your own path?
[GARG] Belgium indeed has a strong variety of bands in different genres and subgenres, a strong variety of festivals, clubs and venues each with their own specific audience. I’m not sure where exactly we fit in with Wolv… But we don’t seek to ‘fit in’ anywhere I guess. Writing music is very personal too. I write and play what I like, it doesn’t matter if it fits the majority or just a small bunch of people. You don’t write music for others, you write it because that’s what you feel at that time. You often hear people say that some bands coming from an underground place are going ‘mainstream’ and become so called sell outs or being too commercial. I don’t really believe in that, I believe that people, bands, evolve over time. Today we might be underground, tomorrow something else…
[RUBEN] – It’s like being in a very crowded place and you have to pee. You become an outsider and walk your own path. It is common in Belgium to do so. That’s what we call ‘a vibrant underground scene’. No, seriously, I feel metal music in Belgium tends to become harder and more aggressive-sounding over time. I like that Wolv is heavy, but still relatable, connected to the soil. I think that’s where we stand out, an earthy feeling with a cosmic connection. We might focus on present darkness, but the door to a bright future always remains open. It’s not just music about anger or depression, it’s about passing that … To do so you need to separate from the pack, walk your own path and face your own devils.
To close, we always like to leave space for the artists to speak directly to our readers. What would you say to introduce WOLV and “Endgame” to someone who’s discovering you for the very first time?
[GARG] I guess just give it a listen and let the music speak for itself… I hope our music can resonate with some people. It’s all from the heart… 🙂
[RUBEN] It’s the most humane, heartfelt project I was privileged to be a part of. It has an energy that radiates, people will feel that.
Thank you for your time and for sharing insights about WOLV and “Endgame.” We wish you all the best with the new album and future endeavours. The last words are yours!
[GARG] – We are really appreciative of the work you do and the chances it creates for new bands like us. Thank you!
[RUBEN] – Yes, thank you so much, Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll!
BOOKINGS AND INFO: wolvtheband@gmail.com
Purchase “Endgame” here: Official Website | Bandcamp