WEIRDING

Driving that mountain

In a thick sea of genres this three piece has spent the last year in the studio pushing through the low, slow and heavy. Attaching a handle to their sound may not always be accurate. As with all good things, music, the common variable maintains an uncompromising attitude, exponentially. This approach yielded a new ten-inch recording aptly titled Mountain, which is about to make its way out to the public ear, as early as the new year.

Their collective musical histories came from a combination of hardcore punk, metal and early psychedelia and that influence is clearly heard in Weirding’s output. Even for a slower tempo band, the impact of innovation in hardcore punk staid course for this trio. When their new drummer made reference to the B-side of Black Flag’s My War, it garnered a three-way affirmation.

Guitarist, Tim Wearing takes care of the vocals and high end while bassist/vocalist Scott Ruddy handles the low end. As Weirding had been working through new songs, they found that they lost their drummer. So enter Ryan Campeau, the missing third of this Pythagorean equation. Drummer, Campeau hails from the now defunct Depressing. “[Baptists frontman, Andrew]Drury tried to pimp him out at one point!” exclaims Ruddy. “It worked out perfectly that I came in and jammed a couple of songs with them, it’s been a year or so,” says the ‘result oriented’ drummer. “It was one of those good things, from the first two seconds of playing a song with someone, you knew whether it was going to work or not,” elaborates Wearing.

So with this new lineup the sound shifted from the 2011, Each Birth Is A New Disaster. “It had begun with a far more heavy psych feeling when we all first started playing together,” says Ruddy. The band’s hardcore and metal influences would make its way into the music and a progression to something more “brutal.” It is fairly clear that bands like Sir Lord Baltimore, Black Sabbath or Hawkwind have been in regular rotation for them. Their current tactic takes on something primitive. “Trying to do more with less. Finding the right riff that is simple enough,” says the guitarist. “One that resonates and rings,” chimes in Ruddy. As they steer away from excessive complication. “It writes itself, in a lot of ways,” adds Wearing. “That’s how we do it, we base ourselves around a simple riff and compose around it. We create this whole composition around it so there is a tone, mood and a direction that it takes. Then the lyrical content we fill in after that,” explains the bassist.

Their title track “Mountain” was case in point for this process. You try and try, it won’t go to a nice place,” says Wearing. In a conversation with Bubba Hamilton from the band Write-Off, he had told Ruddy, “that you can’t fight the mountain.” With a bit of irony, that happened to be the original title for the song and for the bassist, this moment was fitting to their situation. “Because we’ve been fighting this song for so long,” says Ruddy and with props to Hamilton, “We gotta give credit where credit is due.” After the lineup change, this track had finally found its place.

On the topic of tall peaks, these three are all about pyramids, points and triangles. They have a tendency to save the volume for a live show, so keep your ears to the ground, as they may not play shows often. With a selective philosophy of quality over quantity, so be sure to catch that rare opportunity.  As for the news of an upcoming release, their determination to conquer that mountain is a massive feat indeed.

Check out the new release on Weirding’s Bandcamp.



- tiina.l