The Red Bull Music Festival is in full swing here in Los Angeles, with exciting upcoming shows from Robyn and the music from Red Dead Redemption on the way. Earlier this week, one of the highlights of the music festival came as a part of its concurrent film celebration Center Channel, hosted at East Hollywood’s Ukranian Culture Center, which is known for hosting a Pyanska Festival to punk rock shows. This performance was particularly special, as it saw drone metal legends Earth provide their take on a live score for the 1920s-era Danish silent film Häxan.
Thirty years after launching their career, drone metal veterans Earth are back with a new song “Cats on the Briar”, premiering right here at Heavy Consequence. Moreover, the band has announced details of its new album along with dates for a US tour.
Featuring the core duo of guitarist-bassist Dylan Carlson and drummer Adrienne Davies, Earth will release the album, Full Upon Her Burning Lips, on May 24th. It marks the band’s first full-length release since 2014’s Primitive and Deadly.
As with the majority of the Olympia, Washington band’s music, “Cats on the Briar” is an instrumental tune, serving as the third track on the upcoming LP.
“‘Cats on the Briar’ is simultaneously uplifting and ominous, with a sense of perilous beauty,” Carlson tells us of the song. “It contains some of my favorite melodic embellishments, and I’m proud of the succinct solo at the end (all of which were developed during the recording, ‘off the cuff,’ so to speak).”
He adds, “It was the first song written for the new album. Inspired by a vision of my wife, Holly, dancing through a desert landscape, filled with dangerous flora and fauna. It was first performed in 2016 at Hellfest, in France. I feel this album is the strongest statement of what Earth is and does since I re-started the band in 2002, and this song is a great representation of that fact.”
Earth will support Full Upon Her Burning Lips with a US tour that kicks off in Seattle on May 24th, the same day the album is released. The trek, featuring opening act Helms Alee, runs through June 29th in Boise, Idaho. See the full list of dates below, and pre-order the new album at this location.
Coming towards the end of a very long and storied career, Earth’s Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 1 was a move away from the rich, syrupy layers of Bees Made Honey. Eight years old this month, Angels 1 shifted their sound into something a little less layered and more guitar-driven.
Thin, sad, and minimalist, Dylan Carlson’s guitar snakes through long, ponderous riffs whilst Lori Goldston’s cello answers, wailing underneath. The resultant record is slower, calmer and older; it’s no mistake that a few of the titles reference age. This Earth, much like the dying one on which we live, is reflective, gloomy, and dour.
