Radio Werewolf was founded in Los Angeles in 1984, by Nikolas Schreck (vocals), Evil Wilhelm (percussion), James "Filth" Collord (bass) and Nathan Pino (hammond organ.)

Holding a series of controversial theatrical ritual events billed as Radio Werewolf Youth Rallies at such landmark Sunset Strip venues as The Whisky a Go Go, the Roxy, and Club Lingerie, as well as at pioneering Gothic underground clubs The Krypt, The Scream, and Zombie Zoo, the band attracted a cult following they came to identify as the "Radio Werewolf Youth Party."

While Schreck and the rest of the band would later refer to their work as mainly a theatrical performance designed to emulate specific aspects of history or culture, songs like "Pogo the Clown" (about serial killer John Wayne Gacy), "The Night" (about a lovesick vampire), and "Incubus" (about a girl being visited by an Incubus), were pointed to by critics as condoning necrophilia[3] and literal vampirism.

[6] Their cover version of the Nancy Sinatra song "These Boots Were Made for Walking" features the sound of army marching in the background, as well as Zeena singing a few lines in German.

In the late 1980s, Radio Werewolf was heavily featured on talk shows and in media material, billed as heading a worldwide Satanic movement.

Interviewed variously by investigative journalist Geraldo Rivera, Tom Metzger, Wally George, Christian pastor Bob Larson, and others, the media infamy associated with this phase of the group culminated, on August 8, 1988, with a Satanically themed rally in San Francisco at the Strand Theater held with NON.

[9] This performance, along with a Radio Werewolf interview featured on the highly rated Geraldo Rivera's Exposing Satan's Underground TV special broadcast on Halloween of 1988, was additionally controversial due to the perception of the band by some quarters of the music press as supporting Neonazi ideologies.

Though this was denied by the band, Evil Wilhelm quit Radio Werewolf shortly after the 8-8-88 Rally, later stating that he felt their music was being misunderstood by Nazi groups.

Schreck indicated in the documentary that Manson was mostly a misunderstood and misused figure, advocated as evil and archetypal of everything negative through a large scale fabrication by the media.

From 1990 to 1993, Radio Werewolf toured only in Europe, and were based in Vienna, Austria, where percussionist Christophe D. and viola player Vladimir Rosinski joined the group.