Alpha Wolf Chat The 5 Biggest Influences Behind Their New Album

Melbourne metalcore heroes Alpha Wolf have just unleashed third studio album Half Living Things, a self-produced metal masterpiece loaded with huge party-starters, neck-snapping breakdowns, stomping hooks and an internet-breaking collab with legendary Body Count frontman, rapper and Law & Order: SVU star Ice-T.

In the lead-up to their sold-out Australian album headline tour this August, Alpha Wolf guitarist Sabian Lynch and bassist Scottie Simpson sat down with Music Feeds to spill the beans about five of the biggest things that influenced the monster new record. Check out what they had to say down below.

Alpha Wolf – ‘Haunter’

1. Themselves

Sabian Lynch: In the least cocky and egotistical way possible, we influence ourselves a lot. Mitch [Fogarty] wrote a lot on this album on guitar – and he’s our drummer, I feel like he had to switch on “Alpha Wolf brain” to write Alpha Wolf riffs because he comes from such a wider range of heavy music than the rest of us do ourselves. For him to write music in our world, he had to get influences from us, what we listen to and what we write. It was really cool for him to step up and write what are now going to be staple Alpha Wolf songs. It’s a new brain in our mix. Well, not so much new, he has been around for a long time now, but for him to write riffs and now be writing full songs – it’s something we wouldn’t have come up with it ourselves without him.

2. Nu-Metal

Sabian: Next up, we have to shout out nu metal, and bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. They’ve always been favourites. We love what they did for the world and we will forever be influenced by what they did, what they continue to do and how it took over the world. The crazy hooks with crazy heavy type stuff are a huge influence, and one day we’ll do what they can do. Especially now with the Ice-T collaboration, that was such a big thing back in the day, heavy metal and rappers collaborating. We love that.

3. The Audience

Sabian: For the next one: we are influenced by our audience. We love the reaction we get when we play live. We can see what they enjoy, we love providing that, and we love our live performance more than anything. We love writing good music, but we love performing live music and we always want to have the best live show ever. So, it’s good to be able to write parts in our music that we know are going to impress us live, as well as seeing the audience’s reaction – and it just makes us tear up a little bit and feel emotional when we deliver those parts live. That’s always going to play a part. We’re never going to just sit onstage with a laptop and press play because audiences will get bored. But anything we can deliver live that garners a wired, crazy reaction – we live for that.

4. Music Beyond The World Of ‘Heavy’

Scottie Simpson: Production wise, for me especially, I reference a lot of Billie Eilish, PVRIS, Fred Again, and a lot of things generally outside of heavy music. I mean, it’s a pretty typical thing for a person who writes heavy music to say, but it’s about referencing shit from outside of your genre, whether it’s production-related or structure-related. And it opens you up to things that you wouldn’t normally hear in a heavy song, or you find something that makes you think in a different way, how you’ll structure a song differently or just trying different things in general. Production-wise especially, we try to add a lot of cool noises and cool sounds, and I get a lot of that influence from pop stuff.

Sabian: I still remember that interview that Billie Eilish did where she said she sampled the Melbourne crosswalk sound.

Scottie: Yeah, that’s just so fucking cool.

5. Parkway Drive

Sabian: Probably not so much music-wise of late, but business, hustle and everything else-wise: Parkway Drive. The documentaries back in the day started everything for us. And what they’ve been able to do with their band, being a heavy band – it’s always going to be influential, especially for any Australian band. They’re mega excited about their upcoming tour, we’re mega excited about our tour, and it’s cool to see a band that will still get excited about what they’re doing. And we’re always going to look up to them.