Salem Wolves shake up life’s landscape on ‘Breaking Grounds’
Boston psychotronic rock band unleash a haunting new single March 2
WEBSITE . SPOTIFY . APPLE MUSIC . INSTAGRAM . FACEBOOK . TWITTER . BANDCAMP . YOUTUBE
Photo Credit: Erin Patton
OUT NOW: Listen to EP title track ‘Hostile Music’
Salem Wolves’ new EP ‘Hostile Music’ arrives this spring
“It’s that feeling that you’re the last person alive in a dangerous land, and that land is inside your own head.” _Gray Bouchard
***
INNSMOUTH, MA [March 5, 2022] -- Those who were dreaming in January were no doubt awoken by “Hostile Music,” the fiery single from Salem Wolves that doubles as the title track to the Boston psychotronic quartet’s forthcoming spring EP. The rude awakening may have been a blessing, as those who remained asleep could have soon been trapped in the world of songwriter Gray Bouchard. His nighttime escapades help shape Salem Wolves’ new single, a haunting gothic rock rumbler called “Breaking Grounds.” It hits the streams on Wednesday, March 2, complete with lyric video to follow.
“‘Breaking Grounds’ is a fever-dream, the feeling of free-falling in the dark,” says Bouchard. “It honestly came to me in a dream – I was being chased by cats with amber eyes. The chase was some kind of test, and I was failing. I felt desperate, sick, and weak. I couldn’t outrun them, I didn’t know what they wanted, I didn’t know what they would do if they caught me. Every alley I turned into, every place I tried to hide, the eyes were already there, glowing marbles in the dark. In a moment of lucidity, I knew I was dreaming. And the fear gripped me that the dream would never end. The song is about that: The anxiety that you’re somewhere hostile and strange and the thought ‘I don’t want to die in here’. It’s that feeling that you’re the last person alive in a dangerous land, and that land is inside your own head.”
Perhaps most frightening of all is that our nightmares are beginning to pale in comparison to the horror of our waking lives. “Hostile Music,” the song, feasted on these emotions, setting up the EP as a reflection of the fear and anxiety that surrounds our thoughts as we navigate life’s dystopia. If “Hostile Music” was the soundtrack for a hostile world, the song raging with aggression as we attempt to catch our breath, then “Breaking Grounds” is the realization that it may, in fact, be too late to change course. When Salem Wolves once brazenly declared Never Die!!! on their 2020 EP, now we’re not so confident.
“It’s a very different spirit than a lot of songs in the Wolves canon,” admits Bouchard. “In some ways, it’s a continuation of the musical territory we’ve been carving out for awhile – only even darker, heavier and more insistent. We want to paint a story that people can’t look away from, make them feel the desperation. We all tried to live in that headspace as we recorded it. ‘Breaking Grounds’ takes place in the same ‘hostile world’ as the EP, only further out on the ledge than some of the others.”
Originally written when Bouchard was “in a Peter Murphy state of mind” and sonically enhanced by the band’s noticeably reloaded lineup (drummer Don Schweihofer, bassist Justin Tisdale, and guitarist Sam Valliere), “Breaking Grounds” amplifies the unease and tension at the core of Salem Wolves’ new EP, as it pairs with the rallying nature of “Hostile Music” and the sneering affirmation of upcoming single “We Aren’t Your Friends.” What the band presents on the record is a fiery documentation of the lives we’re forced to entertain and endure. Modern life is exhausting.
“I’m slightly obsessed with the feeling of desperation and this song really lives in that place,” Bouchard reveals. “I find a lot of rock music is very hung up on vacillating between aggression, anger, bravado, and the feeling of being wounded and wronged. Way too many songs feel like posturing – the person singing (usually a straight, white cis dude) is aggrieved and it all comes out to be tough guy shit. The metaphors are so cookie cutter: Skulls and broken hearts and gunslingers and blood and blah blah blah. ‘You hurt me, I’m angry/sad about it, here’s another boring stanza on my very special internal world, look at how moody I am’.”
Bouchard adds: “I can’t relate to that kind of thing – the posturing, the self-importance. The rock and roll tough guy with a chip on his shoulder is a cliche. Everyone’s been hurt, everyone’s been angry, everyone’s found themselves in a situation where their back’s against the wall. But more often than not when I find myself in a bad spot, I don’t feel like I can scream my way out of it. I feel frightened, I feel sick, I feel desperate. That feeling of desperation is creatively much more interesting to me than the bravado. If a gunfight breaks out in a song, I’m not the dude standing tall and filling my hand. I’m the guy trying to crawl my way out of the saloon as the bullets fly overhead.”
Bouchard pauses, takes a breath, and without moving his head or even his eyes, appears to scan past the landscape in front of him and out into some far off world we once only saw in futuristic movies. Instead, it’s all right here in front of us, whether we realize it or not.
“‘Breaking Grounds’ is about that feeling: ‘No one gets out alive’ in a hostile world,” Bouchard says. “It’s not a happy message, it ain’t uplifting, but it’s not supposed to be. It’s real, it’s relatable, it’s the end of the road.”
Contact michael@publisist.co or salemwolves@gmail.com for more information.
***
Salem Wolves are:
Gray Bouchard: Vocals and Guitar
Don Schweihofer: Drums and vocals
Justin Tisdale: Bass
Sam Valliere: Guitar
***
‘Breaking Grounds’ credits:
Recorded with Erik Von Geldern at Berlin Audio Productions
Mixed and mastered by Jay Maas
Album art by Scafarella
***
‘Hostile Music’ artwork:
***
‘Hostile Music’ has been heard on:
The Rodney Bingenheimer Show on SiriusXM’s Underground Garage, UncertainFM, Blackout Radio, Mad Wasp Radio, Boston Emissions, BumbleBee Radio, Christian’s Cosmic Corner and Marc’s Alt-Rock Playground and Original Music Showcase on Mark Skin Radio, Everything You Know Is Wrong on WMWM Salem State Radio, Music Mafia Radio, Banks Radio Australia, Bay State Rock, Laura Beth’s Mixtape Show on Reclaimed Radio, Rising with Skybar on WMFO Tufts, Lonely Oak Radio, WODU Old Dominion University Radio, and other fine shows and stations around the world.
***
Media praise for ‘Hostile Music’:
“Wow. Opening riff is Cheap Trick on steroids, hook is massive.” _Adam 12
“This hot-blooded stroke hit me and my ears from the moment the first chord blasted out of my shaking stereo. Ardent anxiety and edgy excitability dominate this fanatical outburst. And when the clamorous chorus erupts you’ll go mental just as these wolves do. Holy smoke!” _Turn Up The Volume
“Amidst a flurry of riffage that creates an incessant buzzsaw-churning wall of sound sits Salem Wolves’ vocalist Gray Bouchard whose delicate delivery against the brash bombast is just the kind of cathartic contrast the Boston Rawk quartet need to deliver their most hard-hitting and hook-laden track yet… a fiery new anthem.” _Rock & Roll Fables
“There are two wolves inside you. One wants to tear through town on a hate-fueled rampage. The other wants to chill the eff out and listen to the cautionary wisdom of “Hostile Music.” _Vanyaland
“[T]he song's title is indicative of the fast and furious nature of the sound, which dabbles in the early ‘00s emo-rock pool to give the song some flare and pizazz that makes the song a fast mover, and one that is hard to handle immediately right out of the gate… An outstanding effort that has the potential to be one of the most enduring releases of the year.” _Music Box Pete
“Salem Wolves certainly get after it on their new track ‘Hostile Music’ which is a combination of something that starts off sounding like a classic Billy Idol song and breaks into a big early 2000’s emo era chorus in the vein of My Chemical Romance or The Used.” _Blood Makes Noise
“‘Hostile Music’ is one of the heaviest and oddly pleasant songs to come from Salem Wolves to date!” _If It’s Too Loud
“Hearing the song some more confirms to us what a knock out tune it is. The line in the lyrics ‘we’re not getting better’ is our new catch phrase for this stretch of quarantine. The video has a pastiche of alarming occurrences in film, paper and news footage showing things weren’t great in the past either. It all fits the song’s bleak outlook.” _Boston Groupie News
***
Press contact: michael@publisist.co or salemwolves@gmail.com
WEBSITE . SPOTIFY . APPLE MUSIC . INSTAGRAM . FACEBOOK . TWITTER . BANDCAMP . YOUTUBE