Wovenhand

Wovenhand will be playing inthe US. On the 8/31 & 9/1 shows they will have Emma Ruth Rundle and Jaye Jayle opening. King Dude will open from 9/2-9/9 and Subrosa will open all the shows from 9/12 - 9/23.

photo by Nicolas Bauclin

Wovenhand have announced tour dates in Europe, listed below. More dates to be announced soon.

Tickets and announced show info always available at wovenhandband.com/shows

WOVENHAND - EUROPE 2017

May 02 - Nimes, FR @ Paloma Club
May 03 - Bilbao, ES @ Santana 27
May 04 - Porto, PT @ Hard Club
May 05 - Lisbon, PT @ RCA Club
May 06 - Madrid, ES @ Kristonfest
May 09 - Ravenna, IT @ Bronson
May 12 - Thessaloniki, GR @ Fix Factory of Sound
May 13 - Athens, GR @ Fuzz Club
May 14 - Larnaca, CY @ Savino Live
May 16 - Sofia, BG @ Mixtape (B-Side)
May 17 - Belgrade, RS @ Dom Omaldine
May 18 - Novia Sad, RS @ Firchie Think Tank Studio
May 19 - Rijeka, HR @ Pogon Kulture
May 21 - Milan, IT @ Circolo Magnolia Segrate
May 23 - Liege, BE @ Reflektor
May 24 - Groningen, NL @ Oosterpoort
May 25 - Haarlem, NL @ Patronaat
May 26 - Sint Niklass, BE @ De Casino
May 27 - Utrecht, NL @ Tivoli Vredenburg

Wovenhand will join John Garcia of Kyuss, Crippled Black Phoenix, Bongzilla, Greenleaf, & Wolf People at Kristonfest in Madrid on May 6th.

More European shows coming soon - tickets and info always updated at wovenhandband.com/shows.

Wovenhand, Star Treatment

★★★★☆

Download: Come Brave; The Hired Hand; All Your Waves; Golden Blossom

On Star Treatment, Wovenhand prime mover David Eugene Edwards locates the shared space between Native American and Middle Eastern modes, with an exciting exploration of spirituality and music that draws Montana close to Mesopotamia. It’s a music parched in desert sun, lost in forest gloom, abandoned on endless prairies: land and elements dominate the imagery which Edwards declaims with stern, religiose intensity, against arrangements ranging from the Gun Club-style gothic rockabilly of “The Hired Hand” to the abstract avalanche of drums and guitars harking, in “Swaying Reed”, to the Tigris. Elsewhere, the dense, droning weave of guitars in “Crook And Flail” and “Golden Blossom” recalls The Byrds, Popol Vuh and Tuareg desert-blues. At its best, it’s quite thrilling: the galloping drums and strident guitar clangour of “Come Brave” perfectly evokes its Indian imagery, while “All Your Waves” develops a mysterious, tsunami-like power all its own. Majestic stuff.

(via The Independent)

Long-time devotees may still favour the sparse, acoustic fervour of earlier Wovenhand records, but it’s undeniable that David Eugene Edwards’ band have benefited hugely from becoming noisier and more muscular in recent times. 2014’s Refractory Obdurate was almost universally acclaimed and further cemented the strange but oddly natural relationship Edwards’ music has with the metal underground. Superficially, Star Treatment is simply more of the same sublimely stormy and electrified neo-folk. No less compelling than anything else its primary composer has done, it feels more like a consolidation of the current Wovenhand lineup’s intuitive chemistry than an attempt to expand their sound, and yet despite lacking any one definitive money shot to rival the mid-song ascension of the previous album’s Corsicana Clip, there are golden moments in abundance.

The opening Come Brave is a scabrous call-to- arms, its wall of clanging guitars exuding confrontational vehemence and David Eugene Edwards’ sonorous cries piercing through the squall like a siren in a thunderstorm. It also conjures more of that unsettling but obscenely exciting wildness that this more rock-driven incarnation of the band have steadily learned to harness. The languorousSwaying Reed is almost doom in delivery, but the untamed resonance of those guitars is more redolent of Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s feedback experiment Arc and there is something deliciously Swans-like about the sheer power behind each transient crescendo. Mid-album epic All Your Waves is even more compelling; a sustained and unnerving, Nephilim-tinged mirage, its blistering evocation of windswept plains and profound revelations could have been comically overwrought in less sincere hands, but Edwards’ utmost conviction ensures that the drama is very real and his comrades’ ensemble performance is nothing short of magical. More succinct material like the gothic rock rumble of Crook And Flail andGo Ye Light’s menacing post-punk thud may not quite hit the same heights of disorientating efficacy, but they each exhibit just enough of Wovenhand’s glowering soul to earn their place. It may be bigger, bolder and louder these days but there are no discernible fissures in Edwards’ holy vision and his band of brothers march on with heads held high.

Read full review HERE

Wovenhand’s new album Star Treatment is officially out today in stores, streaming, and digital platforms. See some of the rave reviews already coming in below.

Wovenhand begin their European tour on Monday, September 12th and will be joined by Emma Ruth Rundle on most shows. Tickets are available HERE, with a full list of dates below.

WOVENHAND & EMMA RUTH RUNDLE LIVE 2016

Sep 12   COLOGNE, DE – Gebäude 9
Sep 13   FRANKFURT, DE – Zoom
Sep 15   BERN, CH – ISC
Sep 16   ZURICH, CH – Bogen F
Sep 17   VIENNA, AT – Flex
Sep 18   BUDAPEST, HU – A38
Sep 20   SALZBURG, AT – Rockhouse
Sep 21   MUNICH, DE – Ampere
Sep 22   LEIPZIG, DE – UT Connewitz
Sep 23   BERLIN, DE – Heimathafen
Sep 24   HAMBURG, DE – Reeperbahn Festival *
Sep 26   ARHUS, DK – Train
Sep 27   OSLO, NO – John Dee - SOLD OUT
Sep 29   HELSINKI, FI – Tavastia *
Sep 30   STOCKHOLM, SE – Nalen
Oct 01    LUND, SE – Mejeriet
Oct 02    COPENHAGEN, DK – Vega Jr.
Oct 04    EINDHOVEN, NL – Effenaar
Oct 05    AMSTERDAM, NL – Melkweg
Oct 06    LEUVEN, BE – Het Depot
Oct 07    GENT, BE – Handelsbeurs
Oct 08    CHARLEROI, BE – L’Eden
Oct 10    LILLE, FR – L’Aéronef
Oct 11    PARIS, FR – La Maroquinerie
Oct 13    ORLEANS, FR – L’Astrolabe
Oct 14    GRENOBLE, FR – La Belle Electrique
Oct 15    FEYZIN, FR – L’Epicerie Moderne
Oct 16    TOULOUSE, FR – La Rex
Oct 18    LONDON, UK – The Dome

* Wovenhand only

“Edwards belongs to an older breed. He’s in there with Cave, Michael Gira, Carla Bozulich, Dan Higgs, Polly Jean Harvey, David Tibet. He’s a mystic wanderer, the type who seeks transcendence in darkness as well as in light. He never hides his voice. It’s a huge, barreling wail, a declamatory roar. And the music matches the majesty of that voice, calling on traditions that can sometimes go past ancestral country music and into tribal-chant territory. This is big music, a type of music that we don’t often hear anymore. It’s music for calling down heaven. There is plenty of great music coming out these days, but very little of it is concerned with summoning spirits in that same way. We don’t get many albums like this anymore.” - Stereogum, Album of the Week

"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.” - Noisey

“It may be bigger, bolder and louder these days but there are no discernible fissures in Edwards’ holy vision and his band of brothers march on with heads held high.” - Metal Hammer, 4/5

“t’s quite thrilling: the galloping drums and strident guitar clangour of “Come Brave” perfectly evokes its Indian imagery, while “All Your Waves” develops a mysterious, tsunami-like power all its own. Majestic stuff.” - The Independent, 4/5

“Star Treatment is actually a damn fine album. It's catchy, it's gritty, and it just feels like a rock n' roll album should.” - Metal Injection

“Edwards resides firmly in the downbeat Nick Cave or Low mould, only unlike them he's getting louder and louder. Having grown progressively heavier since its alt-country beginnings, Wovenhand's dense music now has more in common with Gallon Drunk than Giant Sand, and with a Swans-esque intensity it's almost as if Edwards is evolving into the pious antithesis of the heathen Michael Gira.” - The Quietus

“If the last album was drenched in heavy drone, then Edwards et al. now return to the heavy sway of early Wovenhand or 16 Horsepower, with 11 tracks that cover a lot of ground but mostly take the listener back to the band’s origin.” - SLUG Magazine

“High expectations aren’t likely to be dashed for Star Treatment, as opener “Come Brave” more or less finds Wovenhand picking up where Refractory Obdurate left off, with a dense gallop.” - Treble

“The hellfire realisations Edwards brings to Star Treatment are informed partly by his Christian faith, partly his wonderment at the cosmos, and more pertinently from a brilliant sense for theatre. There’s no real nuance to Star Treatment. It ramps up the excitement from the get-go and doesn’t release its grip. Played loud, it’s a truly mesmerising experience, like being dropped by helicopter onto a precipice, one foot from death but filled with awe.” - Soundblab

“A manic, messy, exhilarating, exhausting affair, ‘Star Treatment’ is a dramatic boost to a genre in desperate need of new flesh. Hopefully a counter movement will grow from its produce, baptising the old body and breathing the soul, the sex and the storytelling back into its mouth, for the sake of the next generation of cosmic outlaws. An aural journey into lawless frontier towns and forbidden valleys of the underworld, ending on a note of redemption and optimism for the unknown. The future’s in your hands here, kids. Choose wisely.” - Louder Than War

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?