POWERWOLF Trivia — 23 Entries
23 sourced facts about POWERWOLF.
Trivia
Five names appear on the band's official members page: Attila Dorn on vocals, Matthew Greywolf on guitar, Charles Greywolf on bass and guitar, Falk Maria Schlegel on organ and Roel van Helden on drums. An organist listed as a full member is the distinguishing feature of that line-up.
By the band's own account on their site, Blessed & Possessed and The Sacrament of Sin are both gold-certified records, and the single from the latter, "Demons Are A Girl's Best Friend," is a platinum hit.
The lyrics on Call of the Wild line up monsters from various folklores. "Beast of Gévaudan" takes the legendary predator said to have terrorised southern France in the mid-eighteenth century; "Varcolac" takes the wolfish demon of Romanian folklore; and "Blood for Blood (Faoladh)" summons the Irish relative of the moon-worshipper we call the werewolf.
On 20 May 2026 POWERWOLF announced a Japanese date on their official site: they would headline FULL METAL JAPAN in Yokohama on 25 October — the first time the band has ever performed in Japan. The announcement notes that they had spent years watching the passion and unending support of their Japanese audience from a distance.
The individual member pages on the official site each record the first album that person bought, and the pattern is hard to miss. Matthew Greywolf: Iron Maiden's Piece of Mind. Falk Maria Schlegel: Iron Maiden's Live After Death. Roel van Helden: Iron Maiden's Fear of the Dark. Three of the four who answer name Iron Maiden, each a different record. The fourth, Attila Dorn, names Scorpions' Lonesome Crow.
The member pages also ask for the best POWERWOLF show, and one name recurs: Wacken Open Air in 2022. Matthew Greywolf writes that headlining it was priceless. Falk Maria Schlegel says it is hard to pick, then names two — Wacken 2022 and Munich 2024. Roel van Helden's answer is Hellfest 2023.
POWERWOLF are a German band. What they built on is heavy, solemn sound with catchy melody, white face paint, and a dramatic conception that moves between English, German and Latin. Sources disagree on when they formed: BARKS gives 2003, while their current label, Napalm Records, describes the band as having begun in 2004 as an unconventional project.
The band's slogan is METAL IS RELIGION. Their approach is to drive heaviness and aggression, melody, drama and religiosity all at once, as a single thing.
There is a clear logic to moving between English, German and Latin. Organist Falk Maria Schlegel explains that they write the music first and then write words to fit it. "Kreuzfeuer" existed as music before he felt it needed German lyrics — and calling it "Crossfire" in English was out, the Scorpions having done that already. "Stossgebet" had no adequate English equivalent; it means something like a last prayer to God. As for Latin, his view is that it is the best language for Christian and biblical imagery, and that a great many hymns and chants are sung in it anyway.
Preachers of the Night, the fifth album, released on 19 July 2013 through Napalm Records, entered the official German chart at number one. The band said they were completely overwhelmed, that the win would not have been possible without their fans, and that the fans had made it happen.
That 25 October is billed as a double headline between POWERWOLF and ANGRA — and ANGRA are not appearing in their usual form. Kiko Loureiro and Edu Falaschi, from the band's earlier line-up, are returning for this festival only. HIBRIA are on the same day under the same arrangement, early members back for the occasion to play early material.
The band's founder and principal songwriter is the guitarist Matthew Greywolf. Their own site says the signature of the writing minds around him is audible from the first chords; BARKS likewise introduces him as founder and guitarist.
Call of the Wild, from 2021, was made at Fascination Street Studios in Sweden by the production pair of Jens Bogren and Joost van den Broek — a partnership the band's site describes as an established one.
In 2020 the band marked fifteen years with a best-of. By their own account it drew together the highlights of the six studio albums released to that point — long-running hits from the early records alongside more recent ones.
On 7 March 2026 the band played Wembley Arena in London. By their own announcement it ended a wait: they had not played in the United Kingdom since 2022.
In June 2025 the band announced WILDLIVE, a live release documenting the Wolfsnächte 2024 tour. As they put it in the announcement, they had always known that no words and no short recap video could really capture what was experienced together on that run. Per their label, Napalm Records, what was recorded is the final night of that tour, at the Olympiahalle in Munich — the biggest headline tour the band had done. It was released on 13 February 2026.
In June 2025 the band unveiled the Wake Up The Wicked Tour for 2026, a large European run behind their 2024 album of the same name.
The same pages carry a date-of-birth field, and it is handled consistently. Attila Dorn gives 27 October, Matthew Greywolf 10 July, Falk Maria Schlegel 29 September — day and month, no year. Only the drummer, Roel van Helden, includes one: 2 September 1980.
For all three languages, Schlegel says the centre of it stays English, for two reasons. Most of the bands they took from — Iron Maiden first among them — sang in English. And English is what lets an audience anywhere sing along. There are German bands who work only in German, he notes, but it narrows who will follow you.
The German chart result was not a one-off. A 2018 BARKS piece describes them as regulars near the top of the German national chart, citing Preachers of the Night at number one and the live release The Metal Mass Live at number four.
FULL METAL JAPAN 2026, where POWERWOLF make their Japanese debut, is the first Asian edition of a festival fully backed by Germany's Wacken Open Air. Wacken runs each summer in a small village in northern Germany; its first edition in 1990 drew roughly eight hundred people, and it now gathers more than eighty thousand from around the world. Japanese bands including LOUDNESS and LOVEBITES have played it.
Falk Maria Schlegel calls The Sacrament of Sin, from 2018, the most varied record of the band's career: fast and extremely heavy songs, songs to sing along to, and a ballad besides. Every track on it could be played live, he says, and he thought they might well do that. Variety had not cost it focus, in his account — the record is tight, and taut the whole way through.
They are a German band, but not entirely German. The drummer, Roel van Helden, is from the Netherlands.