By Keith Walsh
Since joining forces a couple years ago to create music for the video game “Prey:Mooncrash,” the Austin-based duo WeirdWolves have specialized in edgy, catchy, post-punk that utilizes both guitars and synths.

Next week they will release their exhilarating new video for “Overdrive.” The video features some interesting effects created by shooting at 60 frames per second, then playing back at normal rate. The song is catchy as well, telling a cautionary tale about the dangers of buying into the rat race.

I chatted with WeirdWolves, who often speak as one entity (the duo consists of Raf Colantonio and Ava Gore, who share vocals, and both play bass, guitar and synths). I asked about promotion and the tactic of releasing singles rather than albums. “We, as many small bands, other than bands that are already established, (it seems) the trend is to go single after single…marketing leverage and creating little events, that’s what people are doing. Because Spotify is so important in all the digital stuff.”

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The mix of synths and edgy guitars along with energetic vocals creates a dark atmosphere. They me that their approach is to play music that they love and do their own thing. “It goes through passion first. In our case, we’re not trying to do anything that we think people are going to like, we’re doing what we love – and what we love is that kind of dark Goth-inspired music that hopefully is not related to any band directly.”

They continued: “Hopefully, we have our own spin, with all honesty, without trying to copy sounds of what seems to be working nowadays. Otherwise, we would go with yesterday’s pop and we would write our songs in major instead of minor. We’re going really dark and we have fewer songs that are really slow, mostly focusing on singles that are fairly punchy.”

“Overdrive” is both punchy and dark, and it’s a cautionary tale condemning the achievement mentality that we all must perform and conform to the crazy demands of the market economy. The video, recorded at Austin’s Elysium, features a jittery effect that’s as haunting and effective as the music of this fascinating duo.

Production on “Overdrive” is by Josh Boardman of Battle Tapes, based in Los Angeles. The song will be featured over the credits for the upcoming video game “WeirdWest” from Wolfeye Studios.

WeirdWolves On Bandcamp.com
WeirdWolves.com
WeirdWolves On Facebook
Ava Gore On Facebook
WeirdWolves on Spotify

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