Hellbound Interviews : OBSIDIAN TONGUE
Brendan Hayter talks to us in advance of the release of "The Stone Heart".
New Year, new riffs - here we are with another edition of Hellbound Interviews, this time with Brendan Hayter, of Portland, Maine’s OBSIDIAN TONGUE. Recorded January 26th, 2024.
It’s definitely black metal for forest dwellers - “The Stone Heart” is a short and sweet three-track EP that’s ideal for winter listening. The second track is even titled “Winter’s Child”, and as I mentioned (awkwardly because I’m awkward) I listened to it ready to buckle down for a long 8 minutes but it just breezed by, leaving me itching to hit repeat. I love it when this happens!
What initially got my attention was the connection to Falls of Rauros, another of these rare gems that blur the lines of the genre and hit me right in my little forest-dwelling core. Ray Capizzo drums in both bands, and here in OT he also takes on the synths.
Recorded in 2020, it’s just the first of several releases they’re planning in the near future, so if you dig this stay tuned for more on the way. You can grab it via their bandcamp page, it’ll release on February 2nd.
Here’s that music video for the first track that we talked about at the start of the chat :
So, a quick word on to the nitty gritty bits of what’s going on with this blog. I still get pretty choked up talking about this, but it was super to get that nodding confirmation here from someone I was interviewing that they had heard of Hellbound, and maybe followed along with some of our features…
Going forward, this substack will be the home base for any of my upcoming posts - which might include YouTube video interviews like this one, or just me rambling about new releases as I tend to do. You can also follow along on instagram (at) riffsdontlie for more random musings and first-listens of anything that makes me turn the volume up, way up!
There’s more than 10 years of great features over on Hellbound.ca, mostly focused on Canadian heaviness, so I plan to index some of my favourite contributions, both from my awesome co-contributors and my own personal highlights.
More to come to keep the flame alive \m/