The Turning is a pulp novel turned into a metal album.And that is some of the highest praise I can heap on North Carolina stalwarts Bask. The churning mix of country, stoner metal, old school rock’n’roll, and cosmic storytelling lands The Turning somewhere between Conan and John Carter. It’s space cowboys with riffs. But this is no thudding slab of simple guitar chugging. The evolution of these ever spiraling, mutating songs is astonishing, and with pedal steel and strings in tow, The Turning is heartfelt and beautiful before it dives back down into head-banging goodness. We talked to Zeb below.
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WA Keys: Woodhouse Interview
Heavenly reverb is suddenly shattered.Jack Tobias loves ruptures. That’s clear from his work in YHWH Nailgun, where machine gunning synths burst through previously coherent sonic thoughts. On his solo EP Warm People, he pulls off the same trick, enshrouding the songs in ethereal production, then the hammer drops. We talked to him here on The Woodhouse.
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Cave Sermon: Woodhouse Interviews
The names in Fragile Wings suggest softness; tenuous and brittle. And there is desperation in “Hopeless Magic,” “Three-Headed Moth” and, of course, the album title. But the album is anything but fragile. A deft mixture of progressive, death, and post-metal, Australia’s Cave Sermon delivers a rousing manifesto, in the same echelon as Deafheaven or Baroness, able to match impenetrable sludge with roaring beauty. We talked to Charlie Park on the Woodhouse.
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Alex Zethson · Johan Jutterström: Woodhouse Interviews
Stockholm duo Alex Zethson and Johan Jutterström’s new album is a beautiful, minimal reflection on perfectionism and failure.Through an intense and intimate recording process that picks up the clack of saxophone valves, and the humming of piano strings, It Could/If I refuses to let anyone forget there are two flawed, imperfect humans behind the music. The album reaches into melancholy and uncanniness similar to MK Velsorf & Aase Nielsen’s Opening Night, and meditates on how music is perfect while in the composer’s mind, and instantly blemished when it is played. We talked to them below.
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Will Stratton: Woodhouse Interviews
A pyromaniac haunts Points of Origin.John Leonard Orr, a serial arsonist who was also a fire investigator, shambles through Will Stratton’s excellent new album as a wayward grim reaper. But fire itself does not haunt Points of Origin. How could it when it’s the blazing heart of the album? From the former conman forecasting his propane-fueled death to the eon-spanning “Red Crossed Star,” which charts thousands of years of crimes and flames carving California, fire is all matter and all that matters. Stratton’s story telling slots between the dirtbag ponderings of Warron Zevon and Hannah Frances’ rot filled meditations. His characters are lively, flawed, always running from themselves and the flames that threaten to take everything they hold dear. Song by song Stratton’s remarkable knack for crafting empathy grows deeper and deeper, ensuring we must see ourselves in these flailing and failing coots, and the fears that hold them.<a href="https://willstratton.bandcamp.com/album/points-of-origin-2">Points Of Origin by Will Stratton</a>
Netherlands