I am the drummer in a band called Counting Wolves. We are a metal band from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and are releasing our first album on the 28th of August which is called ‘Nero’.
This is a pretty special project for us. After years of searching, we still haven’t found ourselves a vocalist. So in order to keep moving forward, we decided to write vocal lines and lyrics ourselves and reached out to different vocalists that we found online to feature on our songs. Even though we technically identify as a ‘melodic metalcore’ band, we are definitely influenced by Visual Kei. For some of us (me for instance) it is all we listen to. And with VKei having more and more core influences nowadays, we see ourselves as a nice middle ground.
That being said, we recently pre-released two songs off of our upcoming album. The second song is the ballad of the album, which is called ‘Entity’. On that ballad we had the chance to work with Saki Rose, who you could know from their amazing Diru covers on Youtube. We saw that as a chance to show our love for VKei on this album, which isn’t really referenced in the other songs.
It would mean a lot if you’d check it out and share your opinion!
You can also see the influence in our promotion material. I’ll post the album SPOT we released as well, in case you might be interested.
thank you for creating such an album – it was a pleasure to listen to. ‘Nama’ was probably my favourite track. the idea to find a bunch of different vocalist was fantastic, it really made each track extra varied and enjoyable. keep up the good work!
Even though nobody asked for it, I’d like to post the full album stream on here to complete the thread, haha. So, here it is! The full album stream of Counting Wolves our debut album ‘Nero’.
Here is another update from Counting Wolves. After having released our debut album last year, we spent our time writing and recording our first maxi single. We ended up with 3 tracks: Kanashii, Blue and All Of Me.
Because we still haven’t found a vocalist, we decided to continue collaborating with different vocalists we could find online (mostly through Youtube covers). This way we could focus on releasing our music without being held back by the fact we lack a vocalist.
I feel this single gives a better representation of our sound. Where ‘Nero’ was a rough metalcore album, the ‘Kanashii’ maxi single starts to show our influences from Visual Kei. I’ll post all 3 tracks here, along with the Trailer we released before.
It would mean a lot if you’d check it out and share your opinion!
Here another update from Counting Wolves. After releasing our maxi single ‘Kanashii’, we had to figure out what we wanted to do next. We personally always like albums for the story telling aspect that it provides. But with how the industry works nowadays, we decided to focus on releasing singles. This way we can release songs more consistently, which is something that we as a starting band really need to do. This also provides us a single target to focus on, instead of being overwhelmed with the amount of work we need to do on different songs. All the singles then will culminate in the second album, where all the songs together will provide the concept that we envision.
Because we still haven’t found a vocalist (fml), we again worked with a guest vocalist. If you are interested in hearing the result, you can do so below!
Again, it would mean a lot if you’d check it out and share your opinion.
Here a new update from Counting Wolves. After releasing our previous single ‘One Minute’, we kept going with our plan to release singles. This time it’s a ballad! One of the things that we really like in an album is a certain ebb and flow of moods. This also includes a variety of both heavy and calmer songs.
When we started writing this, we really had the ‘big VKei ballad’ kind of song in mind. Every good VKei album has that one ballad, and that was the inspiration for this one. For me Pledge by the GazettE was the biggest inspiration in terms of feel. The production process was a pretty tough one, but I am very satisfied with the end result.
Great song, your band is very talented! The rise of power at 2:50 made me think a little in the construction to Namamekashiki ansoku, tamerai ni hohoemi of Dir En Grey. I really like that!
Thank you so much, your comment means a lot. Dir en Grey is one of our biggest influences, so the fact that our music made you think of them is a really big compliment!
Again, thank you for taking the time to listening to it.
Here a new update and a new release: ‘Heirs to Ash’. After releasing our previous single ‘Dusk’ we kept up with our plan to release singles. This is the first time that we actually managed to finish everything in time, according to our production schedule, haha.
After releasing a couple of calmer songs, it was refreshing to work on a heavy track. You can also clearly hear our homage to the Visual Kei genre, in terms of riffs. All in all, I’m very satisfied with the result.
If you want to hear the result you can do so here:
Here a new update and a new release: ‘Here & Now’. We kept up with our plan to release 1 single every 3 months. This song is a heavy track, and we had a lot of fun with the production. There is a lot of effects and cool ‘glitchy’ processing that we applied. Using such production tools was pretty new to us, so it was a good learning experience as well!
If you want to hear the result you can do so here:
This song is again quite heavily inspired by various V-kei artists like the GazettE, Dadaroma and Girugamesh, as you’ll probably already hear in the intro of the song.
We continue to take inspiration from Japanese bands/artists in various ways. Sometimes for our riffs, sometimes for vocal melodies, sometimes for almost all elements haha.
Our goal is to achieve a blend of Japanese and Western metal while maintaining a style that we can call our own. Hope you guys will like this new release, and thanks for the listen!
