RAISED AS WOLVES // Can We Fix It?

Raised As Wolves is one of those bands with a sublime scratchy DIY punk tone that so many seem to love.

The Wollongong outfit explore punk-rock with a zealous ferocity, crashing their way through the new EP, Speech Therapy, with a seemingly unquenchable thirst for music  – but when they’re clearly creating something to which people are going to say, ‘more please’, why only release two tracks? “I guess we don’t want to cum too early,” lead singer Brad Colley puts it bluntly.

“You know what I mean,” he laughs, “We’re working out a lot of stuff, we’ve got a lot of demos almost ready to go – basically we want to have more content ready so putting this out, working on some stuff to follow up soon.

“We’re not in a position where we can tour heavily right now, so we’re making plans for next year to head out on tour. Basically, I’m treating this like a single release, bulked out with the extra track – we’re working on more stuff for a bigger release soon.”

For a band who make such a brash and bold noise, Colley seems hesitant to dip his toes in the water. Nevertheless, he promises the follow up to Speech Therapy will follow in the same vein sound-wise. “Definitely,” he says, “Everything seems to be more melodic – I don’t want to say jangly, but maybe that’s the right word for it – but definitely vocal focus, not ignoring guitars, of course.”

It’s not common for bands to release EPs of this stature let alone an acoustic track, so it’s a bold move made by the Wollongong outfit to host an acoustic solo offering on the EP – Block My View is unabashed, beautiful and cheeky at the same time. “The whole reason that song came about was, I wanted to have a song whose deliberate purpose was to break up the set dynamically,” explains Colley.

We didn’t wanna go totally stale, so we’ve got some stuff planned – this is just the start of it.
[BRAD]

“We’d play that near the end of the set and by the end of it, everyone would be refreshed and be ready for more loud ones.

“We tried to make it like a band one [song] but it didn’t really work, at one point we weren’t even sure it would end up on the album but it seems to be a good fit to put out with Speech Therapy.”

The accessibility of Raised As Wolves’ two current tracks and the cohesive nature of their musicianship all comes down to the group’s time together, years spent jamming and experimenting. ”I’m 24 [years old] now and we’ve been playing together since I was 16,” says Colley. “It’s been a while now but we weren’t always doing this.

“When we started we were just kids, doing like cover bands stuff – there’s nothing wrong with that but you move on from that.

“We used to play early on, much more 90s punk influenced, much faster and more aggressive, less melodic. It was a bit immature, the sound. We worked on that for a long time to broaden our influences a lot.

Raised As Wolves have stretched their dynamic weight over the years to become an ambitious group whose music houses cut-throat reflections. They’ve tested the waters with the Speech Therapy EP and the more they prep, each day they feel more ready to give into the Raised As Wolves ethos. “Last year was really good then things slowed up and we didn’t play too many shows this year,” says Colley. “We didn’t wanna go totally stale, so we’ve got some stuff planned – this is just the start of it.”