Wolf Bio

1995
Niklas A Olsson (vocals, lead guitar) and Mikael Goding (bass) run into each other at a local bar in the Swedish town of Örebro, and begin to chat about Heavy Metal. After a few pints they decide to start a band. Some heavy metal demos later, in 1997, Daniel Bergkvist (drums) joins the band like a wicked saviour.

Niklas and Mikael both played heavy 70's influenced metal before joining forces in Wolf. Bands like "Prowler" and "Tengil" to name but a few. Daniel bashed the drums in death/boogie metallers "Teeshirt" and punkmetal sensation "The Killers".

Mikael puts it this way: "We've been friends since we were kids and just felt one day that we wanted to do something together. Since we all grew up listening to early 80's metal it felt like the most natural thing to do. The only way at the time to get to hear real metal was to play it ourselves, so we decided to quit the bands we were in at the moment and a Wolf was born."

1997/98
At the fist rehearsal with Daniel the power trio writes "In the Shadow of Steel" and the band finally finds the sound they've been looking for all along. Wolf starts to play clubs all over Sweden.

The band re-records In the Shadow for a single's release. Unfortunately the single never makes it to the stores, but it is heard by the guys at No Fashion/House of Kicks and they go absolutely mad.

1999
Wolf signs to No Fashion Records and records the debut album "Wolf" in the Abyss studio with Peter Tägtgren.

"To work with Peter was a blast all the way. He is so professional and great to deal with it's unbelievable. The whole atmosphere is so laid back but yet effective. We can't even imagine how the record would've sounded if we've done it someplace else. Abyss and Peter were perfect for us and for what we wanted to do with the album. He understood us all the way, listened to our wishes, and realized them with improvements. Fabulous."

The band spends the autumn and winter of 99' doing promotional work and club gigs.

2000
The debut album is released in April. It knocks the socks of the European music critics and gets high ratings in all major metal magazines such as RockHard and Terrorizer. Unfortunately the album cover, created by Sweden's famous artist Hans Arnold, is causing the same critics nausea.

The band hits the road as a warm-up for Germanys Edguy. To create the album's mean twin guitar sound on stage Wolf recruits the local thrash metal legend Johan Bülow as a second guitar player. With the arrival of Johan, Wolf finally feels complete, and the band is boosted with confidence.

The tour is a major success. Merchandise sales are shooting through the roof and the band spends their money on burgers, odd vinyl singles and pinball. Wolf continues to play Scandinavian festivals and club gigs throughout the year.

Wolf wins the "Debut of the year" award on Swedish metal radio show - GRUVAN. Voted before their friends in The Haunted amongst others.

2001
The year takes off in a splendid way with Wolf recording their first video of the debut album. "Moonlight" is aired on national television April 3:rd and is an instant smash hit at Sweden's weekly music show Voxpop entering at number 4. The song proves to be very popular and the video remains at the top all the way to the shows season final. No Fashion releases the single "Moonlight" to follow up on the video success.

Wolf starts writing songs for the follow up album and in June they enter the Abyss studio once again. This time with Peter not only engineering but also producing the entire album. A fact that made the work a lot easier for the wolves.

"Instead of hanging around the studio driving each other raving mad, we could split up to go home or take the day off to do something else", the wolves recalled. "There wasn't this constant pressure, like with the last album, this time we felt really confident and pleased with leaving a lot of responsibility to Peter."

"He is really a good member of the Wolf-family. He understands everything we say, we might be really far out there but he listens to us, laugh at us, or kick our butts when he needs to. We enjoyed recording this album very much and are very very satisfied with the result."

Wolf releases their new homepage - www.wolf.nu. It instantly wins the Swedish magazine Meny's "best band site" award.

Wolf asks legendary artist Thomas Holm (Mercyful Fate, King Diamond) to do the new album cover. To everyone's delight, Thomas agrees, and comes up with a painting soaked with evil. A magnificent result. "Since we first laid our eyes upon "Melissa" and "Don't break the oath" we've been fascinated by their mysticism and wickedness. They just scare you, don't they? The fact that Thomas was so thrilled about doing our cover just blew us away. A dream coming true."

Time will tell about the future, but it is for sure that there will be blood, sweat, tears and Heavy Metal. Hope to see you on tour soon. And stay evil!