Werewolves - how better to describe them than as men on one monumental mission.
Forging their own brand of blackened death, the Australian pack are on a pursuit to release ten death metal albums in ten years. Now, in 2025, the band proposes album six in the form of The Ugliest Of All. Unphased in its brutality and unfiltered in its sledges, this instalment sees Werewolves put forward one of the most grotesque listening experiences yet.
Vocalist, Sam Bean, traverses with us through the layers of hell to get to the very core of this album in a track-by-track that doesn't hold back!
FOOLS OF THE TRADE
OK, right off the bat, I want to make it clear - there is no central theme, or concept, or storyline running through this album. We're fucking morons. The opening track, 'Fools of the Trade', exemplifies this moronic approach. It's about how bored I am by metal bands, and how so many seem to be homage acts, which is hilarious cause that could describe us perfectly. I say stuff in this song that would have got me smacked in the mouth by real metalheads back in the day. I tapped into the attitude of some Twitter edgelords for this. I think the verse riff was one of the harder riffs of Matt's to learn for the album. It sounds normal enough, but it was strangely counterintuitive. It melodically twists and turns; I never got comfortable playing it.
Favourite lyric: "Fucking nerds"
I WANT TO BE OFFENDED
This one's about how getting offended seems to be treated as a sport, with performative offence taken to score points for your team rather than to actually achieve anything. Amazingly enough, it doesn't seem to be making the world a better place. We just finished doing a music video for this one yesterday...well, Rob Brens made it, we just headbanged like fools while he filmed us. It's fucking ridiculous. Matt really turned the riffs on for this album, and the main one for this is a total earworm, plus Haley goes totally bunta on the kit. It's the perfect follow-up for anyone who thought the opener was tough.
Favourite lyric: "I’ve learned to misunderstand/Honed it over many years/I’ve learned vaudeville outrage/imagined wrongs, pantomime tears”
SKULLBATTERING
Matt does these blackened death riffs where he fast-picks power chords moving around a melody, and between that and Dave dropping to half-time for the verses, it sounds super-intense...kind of like Angelcorpse around when they did The Inexorable. Dave also does this weird alternate blast on the chorus, which sounded freaky at the demo stage but came through really well.
All good metal bands need an epic "kill yourself" track, and this is ours.
It's about everyone deciding to go and commit suicide at the same time. I kind of based it on a Stephen King short story where a town seems to go into a trance and walks into the surf at night, and no one can wake them up, and I thought how smelly and nuts it would be if an entire country decided to kill themselves together. It may currently be the most obvious metaphor on the planet.
Favourite lyric: "When you feel it’s time to go/Make sure this song’s on your stereo"
UNORIGINAL SIN
We don't have any slow songs on this album. This one is as slow as we get. We got the eye of the tiger and were swept up in a cavalcade of poser-crushery and blasting and couldn't slow down. Dave threw us a curveball with this track. The demo made us think that the drums would be like 'Relentless' by SYL, but it turned out to be this grim march instead. I was fully flummoxed about what to do for vocal rhythms, it was the last song I wrote stuff for. I saw Pizza Death play at Froth & Fury festival last year, and something suddenly clicked for me during their set, and I went home and wrote all the vocals that night. Ironically, it's about how unoriginal metal bands are...all the lyrics about religion, and magic, and bullshit. It's been done, fellas. Did I mention that we just finished our second album for our black metal act, FAUSTIAN? It's all about religion and magic and bullshit. Anyway, this song ends with what my recording engineer Jack Hartley described as "the opera of brutality"...I tend to layer vocals a fair bit these days. I know Matt's able to pitch in if we do anything of these tracks live. I'd point out what an abusive track this is, but really, they're all pretty abusive on this album.
Favourite lyric: "When you pan/the dirt of gods you’ll find/that kings are diamonds"
THE ENSHITTIFICATION
Most of our songs have a streak of dark, wry humour in them. This one doesn't. It's black all the way. It's funny, a few people have thought what an original and witty song title this is, and I'm like, “No, it's not”. I thought everyone had heard of ‘enshittification’ by now...the modern practice of things being simultaneously shitter and more expensive. There's a real feeling that the best days are now behind us and it's all downhill from here. The second half of the track has some violent and inventive musical passages, and I really wanted to do impressions of Jamie from DAMAGED over it, but couldn't even get close.
Favourite lyric: "There’s no end to this storm/Nobody wants to be the one to say/That we’re blind/That we’ve lost our way"
LOGORRHEA
The song where we let rip on all our fans! I'm surprised we still have any left. Each album has at least one song where we give them a serve. The album needed some levity at this point, and this track definitely provides it. One of these days, I'm going to say something that really gets everyone pissed off, but I haven't managed it yet. I'm especially proud of how the song ends, with me doing a massive pig-squeal while making fun of every deathcore band out there.
Favourite lyric: "Buy our back catalogue, human filth/Why won’t you fucking fight us"
RATS VERSUS SNAKES
Ever seen two people or two sides fighting, and they're both shit, and you hope for them both to die? That's the central theme of this song. There are some very subtle clues about who I'm talking about, but I'd never come right out and say it. Matt and Dave would get chased clean out of Melbourne and have to live over here in Adelaide with all of us infidels. I love the stomping chorus they did and thought it was perfect for a call-and-response vocal...it was one of the rare and happy moments where it was obvious what the section needed.
Favourite lyric: "If I start pointing fingers/I’m going to need one hundred hands"
SLAVES TO THE BLAST
There are so many hypocrites out there. You can almost set your watch by them. They'll do a song about how to treat people morally and ethically, then moments later, it's coming out what utter bastards they are.
When exactly was the point we stopped telling liars and weirdos to fuck off?
It's a grand tradition we try to revive in this song. Each album has a kinda hardcore-ish track, and I'm a big believer in having "we will kick your ass" lyrics to those songs. Like, we won't start chanting about our postcodes or anything, just make a bunch of threats of violence. The final lyrics in this track are the finest I've ever written, and I was trying to sound like the singer of Repulsion when doing them.
Favourite lyric: "Bashing in your empty skull/Turning it into a bong/Sucking down a ton of drugs/Then write the lyrics to this song"
THE UGLIEST OF ALL
I begged Matt to write a triplet for this album, and instead of ignoring me and doing whatever he wanted like he normally does, he actually delivered. It's a fucking cracker. Best way to end an album. The chorus is especially violent; I want to smash up childcare centres whenever I hear it. The first time I heard what the guys wrote, the words popped into my head immediately. It also has a particularly technical end where Matt does a brief bit of shredding, and I somehow kept up. The lyrics are all over the place. Phil Fasciana from Malevolent Creation once boasted about them being the ugliest band in death metal, and I thought that was such an amazing flex that I had to steal it. I had the 'Otto Sump' storyline in 2000AD in mind as well, where a plastic surgeon who makes people ugly becomes trendy. I had a guy in mind in the US who issued me death threats, an ugly little prick who met a horrific death himself a couple of years ago. There is nothing in common with any of these themes except for ugliness. I thought this song and this album were perfect for celebrating it.
Favourite lyric: "If we did an Alabama Hockeymask it would be a massive improvement on our natural looks"
The Ugliest Of All is out now via Direct Merch and Back on Black. Pre-order or stream here!
Werewolves - The Ugliest Of All tracklisting
1. Fools Of The Trade
2. I Want To Be Offended
3. Skullbattering
4. Unoriginal Sin
5. The Enshittification
6. Logorrea
7. Rats Versus Snakes
8. Slaves To The Blast
9. The Ugliest Of All
