I recently spoke with Johannes “Axeman” Losbäck from WOLF about the band’s new album, Ravenous. An excerpt appears below, with Losbäck discussing the seemingly perpetual comparisons to Iron Maiden…
“The coat fits now and people know that’s going to come out in our sound. At the beginning people would say ‘I like them because they sound like Iron Maiden.’ Nowadays it’s ‘I like them. Period.’ But where would we be without that comparison? We get a lot of Mercyful Fate comparisons these days, which is great. All I can say to that is thank you goddamn very much (laughs). We could do a lot worse. If people want to compare my riffs to Dave Murray or Hank Shermann… please continue (laughs). So, those comparisons come with respect nowadays.
“The Iron Maiden comparison was justified and it still is, and for us it’s a compliment. We love hearing that. Bruce Dickinson plays our stuff on his BBC rock show on Friday nights, and that doesn’t suck. He even played our version of ‘Deja-Vu’ and liked it. If he would think Wolf is a rip-off band somehow I don’t think he’d be doing that.”
Go to this location for the complete interview.