INTRODUCING: Row Of Ashes
“We just really, really like making noise!” – that’s ROW OF ASHES bassist/vocalist Chris Wilson with one of the understatements of the year there. We’re catching up with him and drummer Dan Arrowsmith around a month after the release of the trio’s third full-length album Bleaching Heat, and ‘noise’ is definitely one way of putting it. Taking cues from the revered likes of NEUROSIS, UNSANE and WILL HAVEN (who the band are supporting just days after our conversation), it’s an outpouring of cacophonous, sludge-caked fury whose half-hour runtime amounts to one of the angriest and most gripping records of the year so far.
With Bleaching Heat being their third album, you may be wondering why this is an ‘introducing’ feature for ROW OF ASHES, but, as the band themselves acknowledge, it still does feel as though they’re only now working their way out of the unknown. The road thus far hasn’t been easy by any stretch, with the band enduring line-up changes, member relocations, and of course, all the frustrations of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Us being spread out was really quite difficult,” explains Wilson. “But slowly but surely it definitely did come together. And then we were due to go and record Bleaching Heat in April 2020, and then COVID happened and it was like ‘oh my God, really?’”
Frustrating then, sure, but with the benefit of hindsight the band do at least see the perks that came with being forced to slam the brakes on so unexpectedly. “The weird thing is I think the album is probably better because we didn’t record it when Chris said back then,” suggests Arrowsmith. “We kind of managed to perfect it and then we were so pissed off and ready to get back to doing music that when we actually recorded it there was so much energy that went into the performance. So I think it ended up being better because of the lockdowns, even though I wouldn’t want to be locked down again!”
You can definitely hear that energy in the final product on Bleaching Heat. It’s an album bristling with the kind of raw intensity you can often only get from having a whole band in a room at the same time – as indeed they were when they put it to tape at Joe’s Garage in Bristol. There’s a real physicality to the music too, something both Wilson and Arrowsmith acknowledge often brings with it its fair share of pain and exhaustion. “It’s the kind of music that demands that though,” emphasises WIlson. “You have to put everything into it… Being in that rehearsal room with the volume up when you kick into a riff that you really enjoy, it’s an experience you don’t really get elsewhere.”
All that said, Bleaching Heat isn’t an album entirely without nuance either. Whether its the manipulated field recordings of the interlude track Machining Statues, or the more general dynamism of highlights like The Wreck And The Mill and Contraband, it’s clear that ROW OF ASHES are interested in more than just relentlessly battering their listeners over the head. “I think all of us kind of realised that with certain tunes that you write, the heavy bits only sound that fucking heavy because of the bit that came before,” explains Arrowsmith. “It’s not for all the tunes because some of them are just out and out heavy all the way through, but some of them we definitely wanted to make more intense by having some space in there.”
Perhaps most impressive is that the band manage to find all this space in a tight 31 minutes. Wilson explains that the plan was initially for the record to be a couple of tracks longer, but with the uncertainty of the pandemic still hanging over them the band thought it would be better to get what they had down rather than risk missing the boat entirely. In a way, it’s proven another happy accident, with the tight runtime if anything serving to heighten the sheer impact of the record as a whole. “As it stands now I don’t think it needs any more in there,” agrees Wilson, who quickly has to stop us running off on a tangent as both of us ponder the half-hour works of wonder of grindcore legends like WORMROT and PIG DESTROYER.
That latter point does lead us nicely onto a discussion of the album’s lyrics however, as one does find in Bleaching Heat a similar bleak poeticism to that of the peerless J.R. Hayes, but Wilson is characteristically humble about the whole thing. “This is gonna sound so fucking pretentious, but I sort of reflect what the music sounds like. I kind of use words to put over an atmosphere, rather than there be any specific meaning. I was also reading quite a lot, and I don’t want this to come over all art house, but if I saw something in a book that I really liked, I would note it down and then adapt it somehow or even just use it as a jumping off point for something.”
Coming into land, it’s clear both Wilson and Arrowsmith are pleased to finally see some momentum building behind ROW OF ASHES, with the latter concluding on a cautiously optimistic note. “I think whatever we do next is going to be better than what we’ve done, but where that ends up? No idea!”
Bleaching Heat is out now via Surviving Sounds.
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