Following a UK tour supporting Faetooth, Glaswegian band Cwfen is set to head out on their own run of headline shows in December and January.
There are two kinds of heavy bands: the ones that make a lot of noise and the ones that drag you somewhere you didn’t know you needed to go. Cwfen (pronounced ‘Coven’) are the latter. Their debut album Sorrows came out in May via New Heavy Sounds and been described as “a record that doesn’t just crush – it haunts long after the final note.”
The allure of Cwfen’s sound has been described as one of contrasts: the glacial ferocity of Amenra, with the velvet-and-razor vocals of King Woman, and the rotting grandeur of Type O Negative.
Since emerging from Glasgow’s underground, Cwfen has built a solid reputation, selling out shows and pulling growing audiences into their doom-laden fever dream. Released in October, the band’s debut single ‘Reliks’ landed a spot on Kerrang!‘s release of the week playlist.
“We never set out to write an album. We were just four friends making music we wanted to hear. But then Sorrows emerged, and when it did, it pulled us into its orbit. We couldn’t ignore it,” said Alder. “When we stopped trying to fit into any one space, what came out was this beautiful mix of dark and light. Something visceral and cathartic.”
Sorrows lives in the space around doom where the weight of the riffs is matched by the weight in your chest, where the lyrics and the songwriting are as important as the music itself. Loud and crushing, yet sharp enough to stick in your head for days. It builds, burns, collapses, resurrects. Big on riffs, bigger on feeling. The kind of songs you carry with you. Agnes Alder bears her claws one minute, then whispers the next, as the band follows like a storm front, rising, breaking, drowning you in the weight of it.
The songs have range. From the guttural ‘Penance’ to the lush ‘Whispers’, to the feral ‘Wolfsbane’ and the insurrectionist ‘Rite’. It includes a long anticipated reworking of ‘Embers’ and ‘Bodies’, the two self-recorded demos that launched them into the scene. Intricate vocal arrangements, heavy and harsh guitars, a mix of atmosphere and heft, produced by the band alongside Kevin Hare at Deep Storm Productions, and mastered by James Plotkin.
Released as a single, according to vocalist/rhythm guitarist Agnes Alder, ‘Wolfsbane’ is the rock Cwfen was built on. I wrote it for us, before we’d even formed the band. I locked myself in the studio with my guitar, my bass and a blast-beat drum track, and it came out raw but pretty fully formed. Together we shaped it into what it is now. It’s the burn-everything-to-the-ground song, and when I sing it, I’m addressing every woman in the room.
“On the surface, it’s about poison. At its heart, it’s an ode to the untamed female rage that comes when the world tries to carve us into something smaller. It’s about the empowerment in that, and the strength we hold together. Given what’s going on in the world – reproductive rights gutted, LGBTQ+ lives weaponised, marginalised voices silenced – we need to remember how to be wild, and to find courage in that wildness.
“I hope it ignites a spark of defiance. It’s about what happens when enough is enough. The shifting mood. The anger. The unrest. There couldn’t be a better time to release it.”
You can listen to ‘Wolfsbane’ here and check out the video here at RAMzine.
