At the end of K.G. is a plodding and ominous track titled “The Hungry Wolf of Fate.” The song features a tritone at its core, similar to Black Sabbath’s namesake song, and is drenched in fuzz and wah wah with a nihilistic lyrical tone that asks if we’re willing to throw the world away to a grizzly fate. It even references two environmentally conscious songs during its chorus (“Sense” and “Self-Immolate”). The track plays a pivotal role in leading K.G. into L.W. through a quick transition through the sound of wind and mirrors that album’s metal closer, “K.G.L.W. (Outro).” The song has only been played a handful of times, all in the year 2021 and only in Australia. The song seems like a prime candidate for the band’s sets, yet for some reason it never made it past April of 2021. It wasn’t even part of the band’s (unfortunately canceled) metal night in August of that year. It seems that the fate of this song was a bit cruel.
The potential starting point was in a Flightless Instagram stream back in 2018. At 4:36, Stu is heard playing the tritone riff in the same rhythm as “The Hungry Wolf of Fate.” In the following years the band began to develop the song proper. Two demos for the song have been shared. The first (released on Demos Vol. 3: Music To Eat Pond Scum To) features the usual intro but lunges into a verse that’s in a different key (F# rather than C#) and skips over the breaks and the song’s chorus until 1:16, which ends with a different “build-up” section. The second demo (released on Demos Vol. 5: Music To Think Existentially To) is closer to the final version with the main riff and verse in the right key and the added harmonics and the structure of the final song mostly in place. The only major difference is the lack of outro. Cavs stated that the song was almost cut due to the track not feeling right because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “This track almost didn’t make the cut as there was concern that it sounded too Sabbathy… I’ve always wanted to use the ‘Schools Out for Summer’ [sic] floor-tom roll in a song, so there it is… kinda. Not being able to jam as a band and record live meant that we were restricted to our home studios making this one quite tricky to record and capture the overall feel. But after many takes and iterations, this stoner doom number became one of my personal faves and will probably be a lot better live…”
The studio version was recorded by Cavs (drums), Cook (synthesizer/guitar), Lucas (bass) and Stu (vocals/guitar/percussion/bass) and first heard as part of K.G., released on November 20th, 2020.
The song live debuted on 2021-03-31 at the Thebarton Theatre in Adelaide as the second to last song of the set before its other album counterpart. The song’s live appearances don’t stray far from what’s heard on the album though they tend to be faster. “The Hungry Wolf of Fate” was last played on 2021-04-24 at the Meadow Music Festival in Bambra, Victoria, this time during the middle of the set rather than at the end.