Exploring: Dying In The Living Room by Wolf Culture

What might’ve started as a small idea on the south coast of England back in 2015 has since blossomed into a fully fledged band who have not only toured with the likes of Tonight Alive, Boston Manor, WSTR, Hawthorne Heights, Trophy Eyes, and more, but who’ve just put their second EP to their name.

Dying In The Living Room – out today – takes it up a notch from where 2018’s The Devil’s Plans For Idle Hands left off, both encompassing emo and punk elements whilst occupying that alt rock space that’s been left a little thin by the departure of Mallory Knox and Lower Than Atlantis. One collaboration with Kellin Quinn later and 2020 seems to be shaping up nicely for Wolf Culture, we chat to them about today’s release and the band’s future.

We have to talk about the release of Dying In The Living Room first. It’s out today – congratulations. How does it feel having it out in the world?

Cheers for taking the time to talk to us. It’s like when people say that their band is their baby for us. We’re so happy to finally have DITLR out in the world and hearing that listeners are connecting to the music on such an intimate emotional level is so incredibly validating to us. That’s really what it’s about: human connection.  It definitely is like sending your child off to school – nerve wracking.

You mentioned it’s a bit of a new era for Wolf Culture? What were some of the biggest changes in your approach on this EP?

This new era of the band was definitely a natural progression. We’ve all matured so much since the first EP and we take our music far more seriously. With Devil’s Plans, it was very much a case of the four of us bashing out songs repeatedly in a practice room until they sounded like they would be enjoyed by our local alternative circuit. We’ve always had very few restrictions on what we should sound like genre-wise but this time around we just scrapped what little rules we had and made the songs as they came naturally.

With DITLR we were more focused on demos and carefully writing each part to compliment the feel of each track. We’ve always had this unwritten law that each song should have its own space and, while we reference motifs throughout the EP, we still keep this in mind. This time, we went into the studio with Neil Kennedy and knew what we wanted to sound like whereas before there was always the drawback of comparing ourselves to our favourite bands.

‘ultimatum’ features Kellin Quinn. How did that come about?

Having Kellin on “ultimatum” was awesome. We’d finished up in the studio and felt like the track needed a second character’s perspective that would carry the emotion of the lyrics. It was actually quite some time after that we sent the track over to Kellin and he came back with kind words and said that he’d be down to record some vocals. Once we put all the pieces together we had something really awesome and new life was breathed into the song.

It must’ve been surreal working with someone so well-known in the scene?

For sure. When he got back to us so positively about the track, we were all a bit starstruck. A few of our teenage dreams were made that day.

It obviously sucks that you can’t really promote the EP with a tour cycle, but has it forced you to think outside the box a little to spread the word in other ways?

Yeah it’s a first for everyone without a doubt. We’re lucky to have a solid team around us who are talented enough to provide us with the materials we need for the release. Thank god for the internet.

What’s next for Wolf Culture? Can you see a debut album on the horizon?

Max is constantly writing. I think in isolation he’s made like 80 demos or something crazy. So it’s certainly something we want to do – if people want it that is.