The Electric Roach Tour: The Melvins, Helms Alee and Harsh Mellow 

Tickets: helmsalee.net

Jun 15 Long Beach, CA - Alex's Bar 

Jun 16 Pioneertown, CA - Pappy and Harriet's 

Jun 18 Tucson, AZ - Club Congress 

Jun 21 New Orleans, LA - One Eyed Jack's 

Jun 22 Birmingham, AL - Saturn 

Jun 23 Knoxville, TN - Bijou Theatre 

Jun 24 Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle 

Jun 25  Richmond, VA - The Broadberry 

Jun 27  Hamden, CT - Space Ballroom 

Jun 28 Providence, RI - Fete Music Hall 

Jun 29 Syracuse, NY - The Westcott Theater 

Jul 1  Bethlehem, PA - MusikFest Cafe at ArtsQuest Center 

Jul 2  Huntington, WV - The Loud 

Jul 3  Detroit, MI - El Club 

Jul 5  Madison, WI - High Noon Saloon 

Jul 6  Davenport, IA - The Raccoon Motel 

Jul 7  Des Moines, IA - Wooly's 

Jul 9  Fargo, ND - The Hall at Fargo Brewing 

Jul 10 Sioux Falls, SD - Icon Lounge 

Jul 12 Salt Lake City, UT - Metro Music Hall 

Jul 14 Bozeman, MT - The ELM 

Jul 15 Spokane, WA - Knitting Factory Concert House 

Jul 16 Portland, OR - Hawthorne Theatre 

Jul 17 Eugene, OR - Sessions Music Hall 

Jul 19 Roseville, CA - Goldfield Trading Post 

Jul 20 Berkeley, CA - Cornerstone

Four of our artists will be the headliners at the Dark Mofo festival in Tasmania. All the direct links to their shows are now available.

Lingua Ignota: Jun 17 & 18 TBA : darkmofo.net.au/program/lingua-ignota 

Deafheaven: Jun 18 TBA & 19 : darkmofo.net.au/program/deafheaven 

Chelsea Wolfe (Full band) & Emma Ruth Rundle (Solo) each playing their own sets: Jun 20 SOLD-OUT : darkmofo.net.au/.../chelsea-wolfe-emma-ruth-rundle 

More info: https://darkmofo.net.au/program

In 2011 Emma Ruth Rundle started her solo career by releasing Electric Guitar One, a gorgeous instrumental album full of textures, drones, and melodies that breakthrough, repeat and fade back into the drone, and today she has announced the second installment of the series in EG2: Dowsing Voice. Available May 13th via Sargent House today, you can hear the first track: “Imbolc Dawn Atop Ynys Wydryn. Ice Melts as the First Resplendent Rays of Spring Pour Over the Horizon.” Almost like the soundtrack to a film that was never made, EG 2 follows her on a trip to the Welsh coast and down a magical well into the waters of nature, myth and the Old Golds - by way of her improvised music. The 40 plus minute album was sewn together from recordings channeled during her month-long solo journey in the early days of 2020 and completed before 2021’s critically lauded album Engine of Hell was even written. 

Electric Guitar One is how director Riley Stearns discovered Rundle, who later brought her on board to score his upcoming movie Dual which hits theaters next Friday, April 15th. The Soundtrack to the film will be released by Sargent House later this year. More info to come. 

Unlike Electric Guitar One, EG2: Dowsing Voice features vocal improvisation, unconventional singing, and extended vocal techniques free from lyrics - like the throat singing on “In the Cave…” which is meant to be the voices of crones gathering in a rhythmic and physical ritual. Rundle was led to these voices by unseen forces along with the immense impact of the Welsh water: ocean, rivers, springs and wells that gave the album its extended title Dowsing Voice. While there is some focus on vocal and story here, her textural and even bombastic guitar improvisations are featured throughout the album 

EG2: Dowsing Voice will be available only via physical vinyl release and Bandcamp download.  The vinyl is accompanied by a massive body of visual artwork Rundle created in her studio upon returning to the states in an attempt to further flesh out the world and beings she encountered in the landscapes and music during her trip to Wales. The blood self-portrait on the cover is from this series and is meant to capture the moment after rebirth. For Rundle, the Electric Guitar series will always be about inspired, unplanned moments like this at its core. 

Order the vinyl/book only at emmaruthrundle.com

Helms Alee have serially mastered several hardcore crafts, expertly attacking a new style on each record they've put out. Last month, with the release of "See Sights Smell Smells," the Washington three-piece announced their sixth studio LP, Keep This Be the Way, arriving April 29 via Sargent House. Today, they've shared the album's second and final single, "Tripping Up the Stairs." 

Like the previous track, the new song is a hybrid beast, this time mixing elements of post-punk, stoner rock, and sludge into a sonic stew in which each element manages to retain its potency. Keep This is their first self-recorded project, and this autonomy brought new possibilities for the band, allowing them to expand their already slippery identity. 

In Ron Harrell's distinctly gothic visual treatment, bodies rise from murky swamps, waves crash on rocky shores, and mud seeps into every nook and cranny of the screen. "The idea that I wanted to convey when we set out filming the video was an uncomplicated yet visually compelling version of finding... control," Harrell notes. "To me it became as simple as floating at sea and finding sure footing on land. Helms Alee has a pretty hydrous identity as it is, so incorporating that part came naturally. I had an initial cut of the video that was a little cleaner and [more] realistic, visually speaking. The band saw it, and what I heard them say was 'that’s great, now fuck it up.' So I fucked it up and this is the result."

Full interview via thefader.com

The movie DUAL comes out in theaters on April 15th. 

Score by Emma Ruth Rundle, starring Karen Gillan, Aaron Paul, Beulah Koale, Theo James. Written and Directed by Riley Stearns.

Upon receiving a terminal diagnosis, Sarah opts for a cloning procedure to ease her loss on her friends and family. When she makes a sudden and miraculous recovery, her attempts to have her clone decommissioned fail and lead to a court-mandated duel to the death. Now she has one year to train her body and mind for the fight of her life.

Emma Ruth Rundle with the director Riley Stearns

LINGUA IGNOTA

As deeply personal and harrowing as the music of Lingua Ignota, aka Kristin Hayter, is, it belongs to a rarefied, sparsely populated realm (Diamanda Galás, Neurosis and possibly Swans being the only neighbours in visible distance) that feels supra-human, as though the energies she’s channelling have transformed her into something archetypal, transcendent yet terrifying – an emissary of judgement offering no refuge from her gaze. 

Utilising industrial judder, classical instrumentation as though recorded from the ruins of an old world, and a crystal clear voice as imperious yet intimate as the angel of death drawing a finger across your cheek, while wielding lanterns to guide you through the labyrinths of purgatory, there’s a paralysis-inducing emotional weight to her live sets that’s seen rapt fans hyperventilating and a need to decompress in their wake. Having played before in 2019, and been asked to be artist in residence for 2020, Lingua Ignota and Roadburn feels like a symbiotic relationship - a step beyond everyday consciousness, and a beacon to navigate by, illuminating innumerable paths to explore.

HELMS ALEE

Although you could cite Mastodon as a distant musical relative, in terms of mammoth riffs and an ability to turn albums into vastly scenic journeys (there are gaze-beyond-the-horizon shades of Subrosa too), Helms Alee’s wildly exploratory, sprawling nature has evaded the critical spotlight, but it makes them perfect for Roadburn too. 

Just like their five previous albums, this year’s Keep This Be The Way sounds like being dropped into a world where you don’t fully know the landscape but where every moment feels either like a discovery or a fist-raising, body-lurching point of rock-out orientation, before you get sent off on another intrepid tangent. The Seattle-ites are rarely less than accessible, but good luck finding the exit doors afterwards.

Full list via loudersound.com

Mike Sullivan from Russian Circles is featured in the new issue of Guitar World as one of the 30 instrumental guitarists with something to say. 

Get the new issue: guitarworld.com

Four didn’t seem like enough and six seemed like too many and so five it was. Specifically, The Live Five, a place in WONGDOODY space where we drag in figures of note and blast them with five questions about creativity. In the hopes that if you look at something long enough it might change how you understand it. For the better. 

There’s a magical thing that happens some times when your awareness of something lines up just so with that something becoming everyone is suddenly aware of. Not sure how the juju really works but Chelsea Wolfe’s been weaving it. Repo Man style — “[Y]ou’re thinkin’ about a plate o’ shrimp. Suddenly someone’ll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o’ shrimp out of the blue, no explanation….It’s all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.” — Wolfe, from a small town in Northern California is now, officially, everywhere. 

Records, festivals, fashion designs, film scores and collaborations with a bevy of fellow travelers has Wolfe in that cool cool-lady space and even better than that: it all sounds/looks/feels…great. Well thought out, carefully constructed and with an eye toward perfectly plumbing her soul to make magic for whoever has the ears to hear or the eyes to see. 

Do we have a creative crush on Wolfe? How could we absolutely not? 

So having her in on The Live Five is the best kind of delightful. You have been warned.

Full interview via wongdoody.com

WOVENHAND will be back to Fire in the Mountains festival in a unique and intimate form - as David Eugene Edwards he will be performing a solo set in July.

David Eugene Edwards will replace Emma Ruth Rundle who will be in Europe for her postponed tour.

Fire in the Mountains tickets/ info: https://fitmfest.comf

If you ever thought that Chelsea Wolfe's music would be the perfect soundtrack for an arthouse horror movie, you're in luck: The goth-rock auteur recently collaborated with composer (and Jerry Cantrell producer and band member) Tyler Bates on the score for the new A24 slasher film X, directed by Ti West (The Sacrament) and starring Kid Cudi, Mia Goth, Jenny Ortega and Brittany Snow. The movie hit screens last week, and the score — which includes Wolfe's hair-raising cover of Arthur Field's 1918 "Oui Oui Marie" — dropped today (March 25th). With that in mind, we talked to Wolfe about her favorite horror movies and horror-movie music, and what it was like working with Bates on her first-ever film score.

Full interview via revolvermag.com