Adzes Find Beauty in Upheaval on "Inver" (Interview + Early Stream)

Like a sharp mountain range blasted by erosion, Adzes sound less jagged, more expansive, greener on new full-length Inver. The record is more Appalachian than Himalayan—or, perhaps more accurately, more Kā Tiritiri o te Moana than Rocky Mountains.

It's not coincidental that Adzes' sonic evolution followed sole permanent member Forest Bohrer's move to New Zealand. Inver sounds like a hemispheric shift, not least because the songs dwell mostly in slower tempos. Paring back some of the punk sounds of earlier records like 2020's No One Wants to Speak About It makes space for both rage and contemplation, and the result is the band's best record to date.

"Abyss Watchers," for example, uses a post-doom palette to meditate on contemporary life: "This synthetic abyss," Bohrer growls, "Only exists/To draw more eyes to itself."

But elsewhere, clean and spoken vocals emerge from among the rugged instrumentation. "Strange Warmth of Decay" leans heavily into late-’90s alt-rock influence. This and "Rainhammer" run like valleys through the album's heavier portions. In this way, Inver is a balanced record, alternating fluidly between different modes that gesture to several decades of music — still, the main throughline is columnar post-metal that gradually builds on itself like a growing organism.

Despite its lush and more impressionist feel, Inver also balances lyrical themes between coastal naturalism and urban society. "Rain washes grey/A brutalist maze," Bohrer screams on "Antipode." He returns to these themes on closer "Quietus," which bemoans the destruction of the wilderness and its "silencing [of] our wild hearts." As the song ends, big chords rear up against warm bass until they dissolve at last into the sound of crashing waves.

Inver channels the tension between humans' goals, methods and instincts against the backdrop of the earth itself. The record is oceanic, and not just in the ways it winks at the Isis record of the same name — Bohrer says "water is a theme that ties much of the record together." That theme extends to the ways Bohrer has changed musical approaches, favoring big bass, clearer production and a thundering guitar sound over the more raw textures of previous releases such as the Adzes/Putrescine split.

I spoke to Bohrer about Inver, changing continents and the sorry state of the world. A transcript of that interview is below, as well as an early stream of the album, which is out Friday, October 27 via Bandcamp digital release, cassette from Euphoriadic and CD from Philip K Discs.

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It sounds like the biggest change with Adzes is your relocation to New Zealand/Aotearoa. What prompted this move, and how has the change in environment affected your art?

I made the jump to Aotearoa New Zealand with my family as a career change for my spouse. We’ve had friends who’ve lived and worked here in smaller towns like Whakatane, and they’d always been really positive about the experience. My wife had been working really unsustainable hours for a while, and when the pandemic hit she was frontline without much support. We decided to take a risk on a move away from Seattle, despite never having visited Aotearoa. Since getting here I’ve started on a journey to better understand Te Ao Māori, Māori cultural practices and customs. To engage with those practices is to focus on one’s relationship with whenua (the land), whakapapa (one’s relationship with the land and that of their history and family), and whānau (family) that really stands in contrast to the modern capitalist landscape that we inhabit. I think this filtered into the lyrical approach to the record, which is really focused more on life and what it means to live in our current moment.

Inver feels very naturalistic. Tell me about the ways nature informed this record.  

The title, Inver, is a Gaelic word that refers to a confluence of rivers, or a river with the sea. It also brings to mind the word invert, moving from the northern hemisphere to the southern but with the common element of the Pacific Ocean. Despite moving to an entirely different country on the opposite side of the equator, the natural environment here recalls the Pacific Northwest in a lot of ways, with the Pacific Ocean and the Southern Alps calling to mind the Puget Sound and the Cascades. In the writing of the music I tried to capture an organic flow in the songwriting so that the music flowed naturally from idea to idea, and I think that is an unconscious reflection of the beauty of this world and these locations.

How have you continued to delve into political themes here?

When I started Adzes, I was looking for an outlet to yell about political issues like the demanding yoke of capital, of watching the climate degrade while trying to survive and make ends meet, and so a lot of those early songs are very blunt. On Inver, the lyrical approach is more about the experience of living, and life reflects the political environment. Songs like "Antipode" and "Capitaleschaton" are about the ills of capitalism, in how they impact our lives, our relationships, and even our thinking. Some of the other songs, "Inver" and "Strange Warmth of Decay," are more personal and less political, but I think the politics of our current moment still influence them.

You've obviously handled most of this record's recording, and the personnel is much the same as for No One Wants to Speak About It, yet I feel like the production is quite different on Inver—how did your approach change?

In writing this record, I intentionally tried to include more textures and chords from shoegaze and alt rock.  The heaviness and weight of sludge and doom are still there, but I had a goal to bring in some of the vibes and harmonies that Hum and Cloakroom have. In doing so, I wanted this record to feel more organic and warmer in tone, sort of like the way that Oceanic differs from Celestial in ISIS’s discography. I changed up amps and pedals in the guitars, using an Orange amp and Marshall Shredmaster clone, moving away from the harsher distorted sound of No One… and the Putrescine split. At the same time, I tried to give the bass more heft and low end, because I am obsessed with bass as an instrument and a sound. Overall I think the changes in production really worked well with the musical approach.

With the upheaval at Bandcamp, I'm curious what sets physical copies of Inver apart from a digital stream and how you approached putting tapes and CDs together. Is there different art or a different track order on tape?

The upheaval hadn’t really gotten started until after we started planning out the release strategy, but I’m really upset about the changes that Epic and Songtradr have initiated with Bandcamp. I think that Bandcamp’s value comes from the way in which Bandcamp Daily established site culture and kept the focus on diverse and exciting upcoming artists; that culture really helped the platform become what it is today, and I really hate that Songtradr/Epic are gutting it.

The goal of releasing physical [formats] is really to make the music available to folks who might not have the same access to digital streaming, or who might prefer that approach to collecting their music. I love both Euphoriadic and Philip K Discs; each is run by folks who are really invested in independent music and are excellent musicians themselves. Jeremy at PKDiscs plays wild experimental noise rock in Qoheleth, and db at Euphoriadic is behind the excellent industrial doom project The Sun Came Up Upon The Left. We’ve added some additional artwork and photography for each physical release, from various places in the south island of New Zealand. Working with US-based labels is really helpful to me as well because shipping costs from here are pretty astronomical, and so having tapes and CDs shipped to US/Canada/Europe listeners from the US makes it much more affordable.

News recently has been especially bleak recently. How has music helped you cope with upheaval and hopelessness?

Music, and art more generally, is a necessity for me like air or food, and I think almost all of us feel that way to some extent. There’s a beauty in the fact that we keep producing art that inspires and nourishes us even in the midst of a climate catastrophe and an environment of fascist creep and authoritarianism globally. More than just an art, music also fosters community among people globally. I’ve made friends and musical collaborators all over the globe in the process of doing this project, and that really inspires me. Beyond music, I find hope in the direct action taking place all over the world. I’m very inspired by the strike wave engulfing the US as a way of addressing labor issues and inequality; I’m inspired by all the protests and demonstrations for Gaza and for Palestinian self-determination. I’m maybe a bit less optimistic about our current climate efforts, but I also see the potential to move harder in that direction.