Four years ago, if you told me Austin was going to become a great town for metal, I would laugh so hard my guts would come spewing forth and I would resemble an Autopsy song. The Sword hadn’t made its mark yet, Averse Sefira rarely did shows and national tours often skipped Austin for San Antonio. The only metal-friendly venue in town was the BackRoom on Riverside. Like myself, local metallers Pack of Wolves remember these dark times. Pack of Wolves formed in 2006 out of the ashes of grindcore band Games and Theory, in which guitarist Tyson J. Swindell and drummer Adrian Carillo played. They hooked up with bassist Alec Padron and vocalist/guitarist Trey Ramirez from local metalcore group At All Cost. With the lack of a metal presence downtown, or anywhere that wasn’t the BackRoom, the band cut its teeth on house shows, in-stores and more house shows.
“Sometimes, the first band plays and everybody’s pumped, then the cops come, and that’s it. There’s three or four other bands and no one knows what to do,” Padron said. “When you’ve got a sweet house show that goes all night, it’s fun.”
Now, Red 7 and Emo’s book more metal shows than ever, and national tours are beginning to snub San Antonio to come get wasted on 6th Street. Toxic Holocaust and Motorhead are on Lovejoy’s jukebox. In short, Austin is more metal.
Pack of Wolves, which Ramirez joked was almost called The Milky Cows, is at the center of the Austin metal renaissance, and they dig the growth. Of course, Austin is Austin, and some bands do it for the style, not the substance. Pack of Wolves is aware of this and does a pretty damn good job of overcoming the fly-by-night metallers.
“It’s also cool and trendy to say that you like metal right now … luckily for us, we kept with it,” Ramirez said.
Pack of Wolves’ most noticeable musical influences are Mastodon, At the Gates and Carcass. Ramirez said the band is about “blending metal genres that we really like,” blend being the key verb here. They use their influences to compose seamless songs, rather than having a Pantera part here, a Slayer part over there and an In Flames break here style of composition.
Pack of Wolves is pretty satisfied with its own side, but Ramirez wants to incorporate even more metal styles.
“I would love to be proficient enough to get away with being a black-metal band, like a symphonic-type thing,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez also notes that Austin itself is an influence. “Everything we do sounds like it’s from here,” he said.
The group put out Betrayer this year through local label Arclight, which specializes in Austin heavy rock releases. The record is only on vinyl and digital download, an agreement the band and label made together. “We’re pretty adamant about putting vinyl, but I also want to stick with the times and not be total snobs about it,” Swindell said.
Even as the band is on the rise, it’s looking forward to the future: It is currently writing its next record, which the band promised will be “more extreme than Betrayer.”
“We’ll probably be grindcore within a couple records,” Ramirez joked.
Pack of Wolves plays Red 7 tonight as part of GFF III with Lair of the Minotaur, Kill the Client, Mammoth Grinder and the Broadcast Sea.
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