The Well Are Laughing
into the Darkness
Photo: Andy Ray Lemon
A broken romance left Ian Graham staring into the void ahead of Austin-based proto-metal band The Well’s third album, Death and Consolation. Searching for some meaning while butting up against existential considerations, Graham took a couple of unexpected hits to the ego.
But the seasoned frontman’s approach to dealing with adversity is one that rolls with the punches while delivering some mortal blows of his own.
“Things have changed a lot over the past two years and that’s just how life is. Death and then some consolation, wherever you can find it,” he says. “We have no relationship with death as a living thing. We have paths, or maps, or shit like that, but we’re all just trying to fight off our fear of the complete unknown.”
Shouting into the abyss, The Well’s new album marks a powerful progression in the band’s primal metal style. Created with bassist Lisa Alley and drummer Jason Sullivan, Graham’s new material arrives cloaked in smoke and blood, and a little existential dread.
“We are ghosts riding around in skeletons. We are the scary things that we’re worried about,” he explains. “There weren’t a lot of preconceptions going into the studio this time. I do things in a metaphorical way. I never reveal what’s actually happening in life.”
Gothic literature and ancient history provided ample inspiration for Death and Consolation’s eerie chapters. Graham spent hours scouring his library for tales of terror and wonder to flesh out his metaphors, writing oozing, bluesy songs as a means to escape the emotional quicksand in which he found himself and working with the idea of death as a rebirth, the inward-turned out.
“It had to do with the death of a relationship, but also because of my own actions. Stuff like that. There’s some longing in it, I guess, and maybe regret in dealing with things. And anger! There are some kind of murdery things going on there and that’s always fun to play with when you’re in a bad mood.”
Deceptively humourous, irreverent, melodic and groovy, the album’s doomy disposition shouldn’t be mistaken for pessimism or misanthropy. On the contrary, The Well’s stony exterior and larger-than-life stage presence is intended to be just that, a work of poetic fiction.
“I love dark music, I always have. Whether it’s Joy Division or Slayer, it always made me happy and it makes me happy to make these things too,” Graham humbly relates. “Everything’s posturing, everything’s persona. I see through all that bullshit. That’s what human beings do. I don’t buy it. It’s usually the most sensitive people who are hiding that.”
The Well perform Saturday, May 11 at Static Juniper (Vancouver), Sunday, May 12 at The Palomino (Calgary), Monday, May 13 at Temple (Edmonton) and Tuesday, May 14 The Windsor (Winnipeg).
01st, May 2019
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