GRAPPLING WITH THE FAMILIAR: A Look at The Night Howls' "In Sheep's Clothing, Vol. 1"

With Year-End List Season (TM)(C)(R) fast approaching and big releases kind of failing to appear in the deluge October had supposedly threatened, I've decided to go small, as it were.  Today, we're looking at one release (which is technically an EP by 90's standards) and not in a critical light.  Nope, this is some bullshit me and my friend Mike cooked up: It's The Night Howls In Sheep's Clothing, Vol. 1.

Over the years, The Night Howls have recorded a number of cover songs that we never released.  These were songs we played at shows and we just felt like taking a crack at.  But since the next album (which has ballooned into three; stay tuned for more details) is taking awhile to complete, we figured we'd drop these covers onto YouTube to give the listeners something to chew on.
Today's blog is going to look at these songs and talk about why we chose them, what recording them was like and a few experiences playing them live.


1. Stone Cold Crazy

Original song by: Queen / Metallica
Released in: 1974 / 1990
Recorded in: 2013

So when Mike and I were first accruing a setlist for the band, this one came up.  Mike is a huge Queen fan (especially Brian May), but I was way more familiar with the Metallica version, so we decided to split the difference.

You can tell this was early.  I don't even remember if this has bass (we didn't have a bass player yet and I'm not sure if we bothered to overdub one).  The drums only had three mics on them: snare, kick and one overhead.  And I couldn't even play the last part right (I clearly bullshit the fill at the end of the last verse).  But it's a time capsule to our humble beginnings and it was a lot of fun to do.

2. Wonderful

Original song by: The Circle Jerks

Released in: 1985
Recorded in: 2014

Another quick, energetic one to get the blood going.  There's four mics on the kit now (second overhead).  I used a floor tom in lieu of a cowbell for the bridge because I figured that'd be one less piece of gear to lug to a gig for a two minute song.  But there was a yet more major hurdle to that part:

Neither of us can whistle.

Technically I can, but barely one octave, so for overdubs we just made cat noises or something?  Whatever, it's punk.

We got Mike's daughter Kat (who I suppose makes nothing but Kat noises) to do gang vocals for the chorus and that's a wrap.  We put it in the set quite often because we love playing it, and it was a blast to record.


3. Mexican Radio

Original song by: Wall Of Voodoo

Released in: 1982
Recorded in: 2014 or 15 (I used to be better at writing this stuff down)

I like to play this one because of all the ghost notes and hot shit tasty fills I get to do (none of which is audible live).  We finally added a fifth mic to the kit to pick up the toms better.  Mike's vocals seem tailor built to handle the weird delivery of Wall Of Voodoo's Stan Ridgway.


4. Fire

Original Song By: The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown
Released in: 1968
Recorded in: 2016

This was kind of a tough sell for me, because I'd never heard of the song before Mike showed it to me.  But once we started jamming on it, we found a way to make it our own.  I really got to let loose on the backing vocals (that's me screaming my head off at the end of the bridge).


5. Unsung

Original Song By: Helmet
Released in: 1992
Recorded in: 2017

The second newest song we've played a cover of (the other is from 1993, but we haven't tracked it yet).  This is one of the first songs I started liking when I started watching Headbanger's Ball (1992 was the first year I was really into music and the first year I was ambitious enough to stay up that late to watch MTV).  So I guess it figures I sing this one.  Vocals are double tracked, so that's...a thing.

Even though this became a staple of The Night Howls' live show, we've had some difficulties playing it.  The last minute of the song is all single-leg pumping, and sometimes I cramp up; that sucks, lemme tell you.  The other thing is the part immediately after the final chorus has a weird counting deal: I think it goes 22 or 23 times, but Mike doesn't count when he plays, so even when he tried doing that he couldn't get the transition unless we added an extra beat to round it out to 24.  I get lost during that part a lot and kind of just do it by feel sometimes, which works way more often than it should.


6. Symptom Of The Universe

Original Song By: Black Sabbath
Released in: 1975
Recorded in: 2017

This might be the best recorded song we've put out yet (about to change; hopefully before the end of the year; like I said, stay tuned).

Mike wasn't sure what to do with the vocals.  He kind of just did a dry run through as a demo, but then I decided to do...I guess that's black metal vocals over the top?  I don't fucking know; I can only sort of define what black metal even is.  We're covering songs from the 70's and 80's over here.  Anyway, I think it gives the song more of a punch, which works well with how I came at it because I decided to try and combine the Sabbath version and the Sepultura cover from Chaos A.D.-era.  That much heaviness called for some punch in the vocal department.

As a result, this song is a fucking workout: so much so I can't even do my vocal part live.  (Maybe if I lost 100lbs. and I was 15 years younger; c'est la vie.)  I can still play it, though, and it's fun to go that h.a.m. in a room full of people.


7. Last Caress / Green Hell

Original Songs By: The Misfits / Metallica
Released in: 1980 / 1983 / 1987
Recorded in: 2017

We only played this live once with some punk bands that were on the bill.  When we tracked this, both our voices were fucked so it's a miracle it came out sounding as good as it did.  The two songs were recorded separately (which we normally wouldn't do); I think we were doing it to see if we could.  

I'm not thrilled about the lyrics; blame Glenn Danzig for that shit.  I'm glad I didn't sing the line "I raped your mother today" on an album, but I sure as shit sang along to it in my teens.  Not proud of that.  Also, the lyrics I found for "Green Hell" were some of the dumbest lines I ever read.  I tried a passthrough just kind of mumble-yelling them really loud, but you could tell I was faking the funk, so I had to actually say some shit like: "every kind of hell but green", "throw your fucking friends inside" and "Feel it in your cereal".  I still gave 'er cuz with music like this, you have to.

This is absolutely more a Metallica cover than a Misfits one, so it's fitting that instead of the piss-take Metallica did of Iron Maiden's "The Trooper" at the end of their cover, we did a bonus snippet of "Eye Of The Beholder" (which I think we also recorded separately; studio wizardry!).


Thanks for reading and, hopefully, thanks for listening.  New album might be out by the end of the year (nothing's guaranteed on this bitch of an Earth), the next one after that will hopefully be out next summer and the third one might be late 2022 or early 2023 (and just putting these down in digital stone guarantees the first one will come out when I said the third one will).  I think I have at least two more blogs in me before list season, so stick around and maybe I'll do something that entertains you.  Hey, you never know!

Love Over Fear.