On Friday, Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds will release their new album Skeleton Tree, and other than the soul-wrecking first single “Jesus Alone,” I haven’t heard it yet. Nobody has. Cave’s label has sent out no advances, which means music critics like me are tingling with anticipation just like everybody else. This is Cave’s first album since his son fell off a cliff and died last year. Cave is an artist with a long, storied history of staring deeply into the darkest parts of the human experience, of drinking that darkness in and spitting it back out all over us. The fact that he’s back to recording music so soon after such a life-reshaping personal catastrophe is a miraculous testament to his own strength. Even before hearing the album, I can feel the weight of its presence. It’s out there, waiting. And in a few days, it will be stomping all over my soul. But now, there is a chance, however slight, that Skeleton Tree will not be the best Nick Cave album that comes out on Friday.

I’m being glib here, of course. Star Treatment, the new Wovenhand album, is not a Nick Cave album. It’s not fair to Cave to imply that it is. It’s also not fair to David Eugene Edwards, the Denver musician who has been leading Wovenhand since 2001, since it was a side project of his mutant-country band 16 Horsepower. But Edwards has been treading some of the same territory as Cave for a long time now. His music deals in the same darkness, the same obsessiveness. His songs are steeped in the history of American music, of folk and country and blues, and yet they owe as much to some of the clanging, confrontational forms that followed: punk, metal, hardcore, noise-rock. His songs sound like incantations, like prayers bubbling up from below. He’s not Cave, but he’s cut from the same cloth.

David Eugene Edwards has been an exceptionally enigmatic figure since he first began to infuse country, Americana, and dark folk with an unparalleled intensity. What started with 16 Horsepower during the rising “Denver Sound” of the mid-90’s, took on a wider palette and evolved into the more personal Wovenhand. The Denver native also filters this sound through his less-than-conventional world view. The son of a reckless biker and a fundamentalist family, Edwards is an unapologetic, old world Christian with an untamable edge. Working within a darker musical paradigm, this dynamic plays out in mysterious ways as nothing is held back. By laying it all out and letting the pieces fall where they may, the resulting music becomes a sincere blend of Biblical allegory, heavy riffs, ethereal folk, Native American aesthetics, and musical flavors from every corner of the globe.

With the new album Star Treatment on the horizon, Edwards and his band of heavy music veterans—guitarist Chuck French and bassist Neil Keener (both of Planes Mistaken For Stars), drummer Ordy Garrison, and piano/synth player Matthew Smith of Crime & The City Solution—have crafted the hardest-hitting Wovenhand offering to date. The progression towards a heavier and more powerful sound has established them as recognizable figures in the dark underground, reaching as far as rock and metal festivals across Europe and the USA. Onstage, a figure in possessed rapture leads a rock n roll procession somewhere between fire 'n' brimstone and a shamanic ritual.

Match that with the presence of American metal luminary Sanford Parker at the production helm in Steve Albini’s legendary Electrical Audio studio, and you have a sound that attracts plaid-shirted good old boys and church-burning misanthropes alike. Beyond the admirable sincerity and devotion, the record is full of emotive hooks, thundering percussion, psychedelic twang, ethnic rhythms, and formless meditations on what mysteries reside in the heavens above. Edwards’ musical palette has truly become limitless, and Star Treatment takes Wovenhand’s sound to its most realized and accomplished.

Our discussion below attempts to explore some of these forces working beneath the surface. With such a unique perspective as his, Edwards unflinchingly reveals a few of his spiritual inclinations, his distrust of modernity, and finding a home for a sound caught in the sonic middle of it all. Sparing the finer elements of production and arrangement, the details of Star Treatmentare revealed in symbol and intention. The album is streaming below, so listen to it sing as we ponder, how will the heavenly bodies bring us a step closer to truth? And where exactly does Edwards fall amongst the stars?  

David Eugene Edwards has long brought a uniquely pallpable intensity to his alternative country songs. Even back when he fronted 16 Horsepower, his music was filled with a punishing air of travail and — eventually — redemption. Now as the…

by David Anthony

David Eugene Edwards isn’t afraid of shifting focus. For 15 years he’s operated under the Wovenhand moniker, a name that’s allowed him to make music that runs the gamut from folky Americana to dark, twisted rock ‘n’…

by Tom Breihan

Wovenhand, the Denver group led by the former 16 Horsepower frontman David Eugene Edwards, have developed their own take on American roots music — one that’s grand and dark and gothic, one that draws on doom…

Wovenhand will head back to Europe this September to play 29 cities in 12 different countries in support of his forthcoming new album entitled Star Treatment. The album is the follow-up to the critically acclaimed Refractory Obdurate now…

Wovenhand is recording their new album in the studio now. In the meantime, they have just announced that they will be playing Psycho Las Vegas, with many more shows to come. 

article and photos by Omar Kasrawi

And as if to set the stage for [Chelsea Wolfe]’s crushing sound, was Wovenhand. If Wolfe was casting spells to bring forth the darkness, Wovenhand’s David Eugene Edwards was tapping into the…

photo by Dan Long

The rainy late summer evening cast a suitably gloomy pall over last night’s proceedings, but the damp masses in Philly’s Underground Arts created a sorta human humidity that sapped the…

PFOS captured the sold out show at Saint Vitus on September 8, 2015 - watch Wovenhand’s full set now on YouTube.

Click HERE to listen

The above interview features songs spanning David Eugene Edwards’ career, from 16 Horsepower to Wovenhand, with David discussing inspirations, lyrics, and more over the course of the hourlong program.

Don’t forget that all of Wovenhand’s…