The Howlers

“From the very first time you step on stage to releasing your first album, those years, that’s your whole goal. I’ve always been the band’s songwriter but the line-up of the band was different, and I was in the position, perhaps naively, that the people I was in a band with were kind of like a brother, and actually they weren’t. They were forcing themselves onto tracks just for that ego boost, I guess, and there are a lot of songs on the first record that changed in ways I wasn’t happy with but I got outvoted because it’s democratic. 

“The approach to this second album was, it’s the first time I’ve felt free as a songwriter. I didn’t have to appease anybody or worry about anything. I was writing for myself and felt comfortable with the way I was writing songs and empowered to follow that, instead of asking ‘Is this okay?’.”

That empowerment was something that fed into Heavy, translating into a louder, more raucous sound, as Adam explains: “Sonically, the album is heavier, and we touch on heavy themes, and I started working on the artwork and logo with Chris, who plays guitar in the Amazons, and we were going down this route of making a retroistic but modern logo that still looked like us. We settled on a nu-metal logo and it was going to be called Heavy Metal, then Cameron Winter put out an album called Heavy Metal. It was going to be called Nightcrawling for a bit, but that’s the first single, and we couldn’t do that. So, I saw what Heavy looked like on the artwork, and it looked good.

“The label asked, ‘What’s the story behind it?’. Well, I wanted metalheads to take a punt on it, pick it up off the shelf, then regretting the thirty quid they spent on the album.

“It’s meant to be a tongue-in-cheek play on life. Also, I worked with another producer called Chris who works with Black Honey. They’ve got a song called Heavy, and he was like, you can’t call it Heavy, but when people say no to me, I’m like, nah, I’m doing that.”

That first album was entirely self-funded, a position that many artists starting out will likely be put in. It felt right, then, to ask Adam for some advice, but as he points out, every aspect of being a musician in 2026 is challenging: “I come from a background where I grew up with nothing and there’s times in my life I’ve lived below the poverty line, but I’m a big believer that if you want something enough, you’ll always find a way to make it happen. 

“The tools are at your disposal. You just have to have the willingness and ability to sacrifice things and make mistakes. The best advice I’ve ever been given by managers in the past is to give yourself just one more year. If you can do what you’re doing for one more year, you can just keep on going. 

“You can make a record from almost nothing, and you don’t have to book out a studio to do it. We recorded most of Heavy from the sofa.”

As for hailing from the London scene, aspirational for many artists who work outside the capital, too few remember that the city is simply choc-a-bloc with some of the most creative, talented people in the world - not just some, actually, a lot of them! - and getting a place in one of the coveted venues is more testing than many might realise. 

“A lot of people who aren’t from London, particularly from the North or South West, view it as this place where everything’s given to you, and it’s the opposite. It’s a city of 8 million people and if you’re not a somebody, you’re a nobody. There’s a lot less finding. Everything’s more expensive. It’s so much harder to be a band from London than a band anywhere else in the UK. 

“We’ve always been told that if we were from anywhere else in the UK, we’d be one of the biggest bands in that city, but in London, you have to fight for your space and be loyal to the people around you.”

Fortunately, the boys have experienced an even greater surge of popularity in Germany than here in the UK. Early next year to tour Heavy, they will stop off at Southampton Joiners, Bristol Exchange and London’s Bath Hall, but it follows their biggest summer to date.

“We just spent the Summer touring Germany playing stadiums and arenas. The way you get treated on those bigger shows is amazing, but we were quite fortunate to get a slow withdrawal from that high. We went from stadiums to coming back to the UK and doing academies, so that was from 50,000 to two and a half thousand to 500, rather than from stadiums to nothing. 

“The best thing about being an artist is to meet the people who are investing in you as a person and you kind of lose that on the big shows. It’s always nice to have a great sweaty show. Those are always the best ones.”

The Howlers’ second album, Heavy, is available to download or purchase now wherever you get your music