Experimental metal duo Bornwithhair have been twisting the genre’s blueprints ever since their debut dropped back in early 2020, but it is their fourth release When The Witches Fall that most resolutely captures their dense and intoxicating avant-garde approach. Released later this week, we’re thrilled to be able to bring you the premiere today – scroll down to hear the full release right now.
Whether they’re blending steady rhythms with black metal tremolos or psychedelic shredding with reserved spoken-word vocals, there’s always an unnerving sense that this is an accident gone horrible right, like an untrained AI trying to recreate metal and somehow stumbling across a captivating new formula that hadn’t occurred to anyone before.
“This album started as a sort of short story written by JF,” the band explain. “The story begins just after a bomb has gone off. And the bomber is taking inventory of all of their body parts strewn across the site of the explosion. We used that idea of taking inventory as a means of organising the album. It’s an album featuring a host of cult members, serial killers and paranoid and unhinged persons, but they are all taking inventory of what they have done. There is an interview with a killer and his victims. There is a recounting of brainwashing strategies. There is the confession of a murderer which itself devolves into a sort of disturbing chronicling of the stalking of a victim. In the end, it’s an album about how we remember things and how we attempt to deal with what constitutes reality once our understanding of reality has broken. And we spent a long time trying to make the music and the sound of the recording itself reflect that brokenness.”
When The Witches Fall is out 8th October on Trepanation Recordings. Order here.
Words: George Parr
