Even though the words Grunge and polished do not usually work together, especially not in music, WOKE makes it work as shown in songs like “I admire all the birds” and “Different in a different way”. With hard instrumentals and the singers voice that reminds one of Kurt Cobain himself they’ve been making music since 2017, but it has not always been the four of them.
Alex, the singer, and Valentin, the drummer, have known each other for years before they met up for a jamming session. This turned out to be the best decision they could’ve made as this was the start of a journey into the world of music and band life.
Like most bands the members had very similar but still different introduction into the scene. For Valentin is has been a lifelong admiration for bands like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Bon Jovi, and later the Foo fighters. Some of them were going through hard times and landed in Emo music through those struggles, like Markus, the guitarist, and Alex. Their bassist Clemens, that only started to play the bass when he joined the band in 2022, rebelled at age 12 after his brother introduced him to street punk.
After a short break from music, he was looking for a band and was invited to an audition by Alex and Valentin which he learned every song of their discography for. From this moment on they were a trio before Markus found them on the website “Bandsuche” where he initially tried to find members for a band of his own. Turns out he was the missing link the trio was looking for and as of September 2023 he completed the band from lower Austria.
The influences from which the four of them draw their inspiration can be clearly seen in their music and their way of playing as the roughness, anger, and sadness of Grunge and alternative rock is evident in their numerous singles. Those songs are created entirely through teamwork and an extensive list of potential titles and lyrics by singer Alex which subsequently get completed by the others who add and write their own parts. They have reiterated that this is especially important to them as everybody keeps their own voice and contributes to the overall sound of the band’s music. The mixing and post-production is the work of Thomas Pröschl, their producer to which they own a lot of their polished-ness.
The perfect example for this is their recent release “Themes”: a ten song EP consisting of the aforementioned “I admire all the birds” and “Different in a different way”. It is a journey starting with the softness of “Radiofighters” before progressing into heavier tunes with titles like “unnecessarily long title because it’s kind of in right now in this scene so there you go” and “Sting”. These sounds are only going to get heavier while softer songs like the before-mentioned “Radiofighters” are going to develop into an even more pronounced softness.
Promises like these are what is getting us excited for their future releases, that they have planned plenty of, as well as their concerts which we are sure to attend as we would urge you to do as well if you’re a fan of Nirvana-like coolness, heavy drums, and rememberable guitar riffs. Until then put on your headphones or turn up your Bluetooth box, learn all their lyrics, and rock out to “Themes” until their next performance.
We for sure will do exactly this.
Our thoughts on their work is more than just evident but here it is again:
We absolutely love WOKEs’ music and hope the guys are gonna keep up the awesome work as we are already hungry for more music! Don’t let us starve guys!
written by Anna