web analytics
Home | Interviews | Interview: AJ Diaferio (We’re Wolves)

Interview: AJ Diaferio (We’re Wolves)

“We’re Wolves are known as the dark humor, horror loving rock band with an energetic blend of metal subgenre and hard rock influences. The single release is a sinful snippet leading up to their full-length album “Evil Things,” which is already garnering buzz from LoudwireRevolver Magazine, Outburn Magazine, and more. Evil Things, set to release on October 22, delivers a ground-shattering debut for We’re Wolves and contains features from Bryan Kuznitz of Fame On Fire and Spencer Charnas of Ice Nine Kills. Following the album release, they are set to appear at Florida’s most coveted horror convention, Spooky Empire, on October 23rd.”

Hi AJ, I’m so excited to talk with you. I was listening to some of the songs on Spotify and I got to see the music video for “Sell Your Sell”. It’s amazing. How did all this manifest?

AJ- Oh, you got to see, “Sell Your Sell”

Yes, it was amazing. It’s a fun video.

AJ- Awesome, hell yeah. That was a lot of fun to put together. It was a chaotic process to put that all together. It took about two months to write the script and the treatment. It took about a month of staying on top of people about locations. There is a ton of locations involved.

Yeah. How many locations did We’re Wolves film at? The video is awesome.

AJ- Thank you. I’m so nervous because people get to finally see it. I’ve been sitting on it for a year now. Me and my whole team have been stressed out. I don’t know if you noticed but there is an option to skip the intro part of the video and go right to the start of the song?

Yes, I did see that.

AJ- We just talked about it constantly. It is too long and are people with ADHD like myself going to want to sit through it if they’re not emotionally invested in the band, or people just want to see a music video, I don’t really care about this comedy thing. We’re trying to be artistic playing our Mel Brooks style kind of parody of Wolf of Wall Street. It went into stuff like that, knit picking way too much. As far as locations go, I want to say there was six locations. We shot in a friend of mines office, one of my clients because I’m a barber. A friend of mine owns a healthcare business so we used his office for the day. There was an Italian villa which actually funny enough, it was across the street from Nicko McBrain’s house, the drummer from Iron Maiden. A close personal friend of ours named Tommy, it was his dad’s house. We filmed the video “Fall With Me” at that location too. It’s a beautiful rustic super-Italian looking house. We did green screen at a place called Ask Media and at an airport.

I did see the skip option because I don’t always have an attention span but I did watch the whole video. It was great.

AJ- Thank you. The first time we finished the songs and got to hear a proper mix of it, immediately I said, we have to do Wolf of Wall Street. I love that movie and I wanted to find a way to pepper in our horror kind of vibe.

What can you tell us about the album and how you got started? Also, where did the name We’re Wolves come from?

AJ- The name is derived from my love of comic books, horror movies, and just rock n roll in general. I wanted something that didn’t take itself too seriously. Since I was a little kid, what got me really into horror was when I was around four years old, my dad noticed that I would gravitate towards horror movies in the VHS store. My dad said, do you want to see a real horror movie? We were in New Jersey and he popped in a VHS, and we watched An American Werewolf in London, and ever since then I have been completely and utterly obsessed with that film. They haven’t made a werewolf movie that comes close to that film. It’s hands down one of my all-time favorites. It has one of the best transformation scenes that you have seen in your life. It was like the JAWS factor; they didn’t allow you to see all of it at once which it made it that much scarier. There is a band called, Every Time I Die, I’m a huge fan of that band. They have a song called, “Werewolf.” I remember looking at that and thinking, we need a name like that. Something that you can slap on everything, something like KISS.  I always liked the idea of not taking yourself too seriously while still trying to convey a powerful image. We’re Wolves just made the most sense, a way to kind of poke fun at the supernatural.

I do love the name of the band and as far as horror movies with the unknown. It is scary. What can you tell us about the album?

AJ- The album is based off of Dante’s Inferno. I kind of fell in love with this whole concept. We didn’t realize we were going to be doing a full-length album, we were shooting to do another EP. We were going to do the seven deadly sins. A buddy of mine brought up Dante’s Inferno, and I kind of forgot about Dante’s Inferno. I ended up going through this deep dive and studying it a bit. I ended up falling in love with the story arc. “Sell Your Soul” is obviously about greed. What would greed sound like? What does lust sound like? What does wrath sound like? We broke it down lyrically, melodically, vocally, and what have you. We tried to kind of put together this album that is a sonic journey through hell. When the album comes out there is an introduction track, and it’s called, “Welcome to Hell.” The introduction track is me and the singer from Fame on Fire. The introduction kind of pulls you into the album.

Will We’re Wolves be touring at all?

AJ- We have been playing and we’ll be playing Spooky Empire so we’re excited about that. (Spooky Empire is October 22-24 in Orlando, FL.) We’ve had like four or five pretty decent shows. As far as COVID goes, right now there are some major festivals going on and my buddy that I mentioned is on tour with our friends in Ice Nine Kills. Touring is definitely something we want to do.

Awesome. A bunch of my friends went to see Ice Nine Kills.

AJ- If you ever get the chance they put on an absolutely incredible show. They are a fantastic band. We have Spencer Charnas on one of our tracks. We are excited about that.

Who has inspired you professionally?

AJ- I’m kind of all over the map. Slipknot, Papa Roach, I grew up a lot with hair metal, Ozzie, Alice Cooper, he’s not really hair metal, he’s just had like an amazing career since the seventies. But, Motley Crue and my biggest influence is probably Rob Zombie because he’s kind of played around in the realm of what I want to do. I want to go from the band to film and everywhere in between.

Rob Zombies shows are the most energetic shows ever. He has an incredibly different take on things.

AJ- A lot of people have to let go of these preconceived notions of being married to this one concept. Let directors try things. You can always go back and watch the film you love the most.

What do you want to say to the fans and to the horror community? What do you want them to know from your perspective about your music?

AJ- Just try to enjoy yourself. Whatever it is your doing, whatever it is your watching or listening to, try to find something in there for yourself to enjoy the experience.

Thank you so much, AJ. It was a blast talking with you.

AJ- Thank you.

@Werewolves https://linktr.ee/Werewolves

Spooky Empire https://spookyempire.com/

https://www.facebook.com/wearewolvesfl

https://instagram.com/werewolves_fl

ICE NINE KILLS https://iceninekills.com/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.