Wailin Storms — Southern Doom on The Arsonist

Southern Doom, Cut to Tape

If you’re a fan of Down or Pallbearer, clear a slot this week. Wailin Storms’ The Arsonist is right up your alley.

There’s real doom in here, Southern sludge, heavy passages that drop into atmospheric ones, all built into the same nine songs. It’s a fun listen, the kind of record that rewards volume. And it was tracked fully analog, which you almost never see anymore. That alone is worth paying attention to.

The Arsonist is the Durham band’s fifth album and first for Season of Mist, out this Friday, July 10. You don’t have to wait. Decibel is streaming all nine songs two days early, right now. It was recorded to tape by Matt Talbott of Hum at Earth Analog, cut raw on purpose as a shot at today’s overproduced, AI-slop music.

This is the corner of heavy music nobody’s covering. A Southern gothic sludge band signs to one of metal’s most serious labels, records analog with a guy from Hum, and paints its own Magritte-inspired cover art, and the mainstream metal press has nothing to say about it. That’s the gap Weapon K Media exists to fill. Watch the title track below, then go hear the whole thing.

The band takes it on the road this summer, a headline US run that kicks off July 17 with an album release show in Durham. Stream it now. Then go see what it sounds like loud.

Tour Dates

Source: Decibel Magazine