Our bro-down takes place just weeks after the four-piece — which comprises vocalist Eric Lara, guitarist Moose Moura, bassist Wes Switzer and drummer and keyboardist Johnny Hill — performed at the Tacos Y Lobos showcase at Ruins.
Though Moura is not as much into sports as Lara, Switzer and Hill, members say the band can be best described as a sports team.
“I thought about this the other day, because we recorded the show at Ruins,” says Lara. “And I'm over here listening to the performance, like it's a game tape, like literally a sport. I'm like, ‘Alright, let's play it back, let’s go through all the highlights.’ I'm looking at our playbook and the crowds and the attention to detail.”
When he was in high school, Lara had been part of a band that broke up over his plans to attend Rice University. Weeks before registration, he decided not to attend Rice and instead to take classes at Richland College, where he met Moura and Hill.
Switzer joined the band after he and Lara met at the University of Texas at Arlington and bonded over their similar taste in music.
A progressive rock and alternative band, Wolves Reign cites bands like The Mars Volta, Incubus and Deerhunter as inspirations. Their debut album, Human Nature, released this past January, hones in on a mix of youthful angst and polished, painful self-awareness.
“Idols,” a standout track on the album, was born out of a phase of questioning by Lara.
“And we stare at the sun, waiting for its ray to shine / Never thought how it made us so blind / Just as the stone became mechanized, and still refused to move,” shouts Lara with passion on the track’s intro.
“‘Idols’ originally comes out of me — at 22 or 23 — saying religion is holding us back as a society,” says Lara. “Where is your God? Are they actually making your life better? And this is post-Obama, early Trump-ish kind of stuff, and so [this time] is leading specifically with the religious side, and I'm like, ‘Where's it leading us?’ There's a lot of anger [in the song], but I think now with religion, I'm a little bit easier. It's cultural, and people live their lives however they want, and that was a lot of younger 20s angst.”
“I think musically, that song’s kind of a signature style,” adds Hill. “You get a little bit of everything we bring as a band.”
Questioning is a common theme on the Human Nature album. Another song, “Creating Space,” has Lara reflecting on his life’s purpose. “Is this all reframed? Will this go to waste? Am I creating space,” he sings.
The members of Wolves Reign say many of the songs came together naturally as a result of their friendly, loving dynamic, and that no song was more difficult to write, record and produce than the other — with the exception of one song that ultimately didn’t make the album. But still, they can’t help but play these B-sides live.
“There was a song called ‘Revolver,’" says Moura, “And every time we played it in practice, we would just disagree about what the time signature was, and we're just like, complaining and fighting about our tones. We were just like, ‘You know what, fuck it, we're not going to do this song anymore.’ It was a great song that we love to play, but we had so much recorded that we just put it aside.”
Nature and Nurture
But as cycles in nature tend to evolve, the same happens in art. Early next year, Wolves Reign plan a sequel to Human Nature called Nurture.The band teases Nurture as a widening of the spectrum of their sound. While the subject matter might be lighter, they tease that the sound itself will be a bit darker.
“We've had some old material that we've kind of shelved,” says Hill, “and some stuff that we've written that sounds like ‘This isn't really a full song,’ but we've kind of brought it into production and added some new sounds.”
“We have a lot of tracks in their bare-bones stage,” adds Switzer, “A few of them we know pretty well, but there's still a ways to go on there. There are really chill songs, and then there are some really chaotic songs.”
Wolves Reign have their work cut out for them. With a timeline mapped out for release and goals to play “one show every quarter,” the members are taking a slow-burn approach, delivering timeless sounds and maintaining their love for each other.
As independent artists, the group has felt the many struggles local acts face, notably with the number of venues dwindling. But they credit venues like Trees and Three Links for keeping music alive in Deep Ellum.
Having formed over a decade ago, and only now releasing their debut album 10 years in, Wolves Reign are focused more on quality over fame.
“As independent artists, it's much harder to get people at shows, because there are so many options they can go to,” says Lara. “But that means that we have to be better at what we do. As independent artists have to be marketers, we have to be designers, we have to be composers, we have to be so much more. But with that, we have to hold ourselves accountable and say, ‘Am I doing what I need to do to keep these people's attention?’”
