Broken Wolves unveil debut album The Summons – A dirge for modern times
Toronto, ON-based dark-folk/alternative-rock band Broken Wolves, have released their debut album, The Summons.
Formed in 2017, the band made their live debut in 2019 and had their first release in 2020 with their EP and video series, Live at Taurus.
Their recent effort, The Summons, is a revival of the “album rock” art form, drawing inspiration from ’60s folk and psychedelic rock, ’90s alternative rock, and medieval art – a stark mix that has been compared to “dark folk” and an apt recent moniker, Dirge Rock.
The subject matter of the band and album are steeped in environmentalism and climate change themes, depicted in a modern take on a folklore tradition that is both subtle and palpable in its execution.
Listen to The Summons below and learn more about Broken Wolves via our Five Questions With segment.
Care to introduce yourself to our readers?
Absolutely! We’re Broken Wolves, a psych/alt-rock band based in Toronto, Ontario. We first formed in 2017 and have been playing around Toronto since 2019! Our sound is often described as somewhere between 60’s psych rock and 90’s alternative with a dash of medievalist imagery. We released a live Ep and video series, “Live at Taurus,” back in 2020 on the eve of the pandemic and recently started performing again in 2021 and up to the present!
Tell us a bit about your most recent release.
Our new release, “The Summons,” is our debut full-length album, and we’re quite pleased with the final product! It’s been a long time coming, as we started recording in 2019 and just recently put the finishing touches on the recording process in early 2022. It borrows a lot of influence from prog-rock and the concept album format, but we like to think it’s not tied down to a strict narrative and jumps between slow-burning, dirgey bangers and up-tempo progressive, psychedelic stompers.
Because of the pandemic, it was a lot of stop-and-start in the recording process, and even saw a line-up change for drummers. Still, we like to think the album’s overall sound is cohesive and smooth and will take the listener down an engrossing sonic journey.
As to the nature of some of the lyrics, almost all of the subject matter in the music deals a bit with the threat of catastrophic climate change, tied together through a loose narrative arc of a protagonist that goes on a hunt through mystic realms to save the world from destruction, but actually brings about the initiation of that same disaster through arrogance and pride.
Where do you tend to pull inspiration from when writing?
For writing, much inspiration has come from meditating on medieval and folk art, to be honest. I’m in love with the art form of illuminated manuscripts, especially the late-Victorian illustrators borrowed from a pseudo-medievalist/folk art style like Alphonse Mucha, Aubrey Beardsley, and Ivan Bilbin. Their use of crisp linework and colour has birthed many a riff or idea, conceptually or technically, for the writing in this band.
Sonically, I’ve borrowed a lot from the moodier works of Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, and the Byrds, to name the ‘60s component, but also from grunge bands like Soundgarden, Nirvana, and even Tool – though less grunge – as far as the sonic palette and overall vibe is concerned.
The lyrics, as mentioned, are heavily influenced by topics around climate change and environmentalism, and I’ve tried to draw influence from didactic tales like Prometheus, Faust, and Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’m fascinated by this classic conflict, found in all those texts, in my opinion, between humanity and nature and the classic danger in humanity’s quest to subdue and commandeer nature for ‘god’-like purposes without truly appreciating or understanding our place within nature and our incapacity to fully harness or respect it. I’ve also drawn massive inspiration and influence from Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki as they address those kinds of topics with flawless execution – I adore the lore, the artwork, and the discussion they bring about from film to film on these topics, and find them to be totally enchanting and rife with inspiration.
Do you have any upcoming shows or festivals you’d like to tell us about?
We do! We have our big release show Thurs November 3rd, at The Baby G in Toronto, with our very good friends Sunlust and Alex Gage’s Flagship! A real family affair, as we would’ve played our first show with Sunlust in the spring of 2019, and Alex Gage is a member of the Wolves, so it really feels like a mini-family reunion of sorts! After that, we’ll be looking to book some show and potentially some festivals for 2023 and take it from there!
What’s your goal for 2022?
Honestly, we just want to get the album out to as many ears as we can, have a fun and successful release show, and hopefully make some new friends and fans along the way! The calendar for 2023 is pretty open, so we’ll probably plan for that; otherwise, try to enjoy and bask in the big release as much as possible!