Texas Stonegaze three-piece True Widow have released their second album, ‘As High as the Highest Heavens and From the Center to the Circumference of the Earth’, and it’s been a massive hit with the critics.
Released on May 2nd, the follow up to their celebrated 2008 self-titled debut has been lauded by listeners around the world, and received a brilliant 10/10 review from Drowned in Sound.
The E-Zine went on to write “True Widow have laid down an album so strong that I can't see anything usurping it as album of the year for me (or anyone else who gives it a few listens). And at the end of April, that's a mighty bold claim.”
And having signed to release this album, the Dallas-based trio joins Kemado’s burgeoning roster of exciting heavy music, which also includes The Sword, Saviours and Xasthur.
Over the past two decades, we’ve been bombarded with grunge, with shoegaze, with sludge, with doom metal, with post-rock, with slow-core, with all these examples of loud rock music that reach towards one extreme or another. The sole intent of this seems to be to bludgeon the listener into accepting what they conceive to be a “total sound,” one which makes their effort more valid than the others around it, and by association, worthy of your reverence.
True Widow plays against type. Listen closely to their new record ‘As High As the Highest Heavens…’ and you’ll notice something rare: a band that plays to the notions of the genres mentioned above, one which embodies the best characteristics of each but never repeats something that’s been done. The understanding of space, balance, and method exhibited by True Widow is different enough to avoid the trappings of genres done to death; special enough to revere, and to pull away from memories of sounds that once wore you down.
Big guitar, bigger drums and the biggest bass (played by D.H., Slim, and Nikki, respectively) effortlessly recreate the unending skies of prairie America, where storms blow across with fury, horizons are unencumbered by the choke of skyscrapers and electric light, and the atmosphere pushes you down. A rumbling backdrop of distortion churns away, both behind and within True Widow’s plaintive song structures, but never overpowers it. Across a 50-minute runtime, the nine songs here range from excavated alt-rock anthems (“Night Witches,” “Skull Eyes”) to methodical epics like “Boaz” and “Blooden Horse,” to triumphant bulldozers of sound like “NH,” which splits the difference between dirge and hymn, the instruments staring into the ground while D.H. and Nikki’s voices ascend to the clouds.
Plenty of you may balk at both the length and largesse expressed in the title of True Widow’s new album, but once its powers seep into your skull, you’ll likely find it impossible to doubt the magnitude of what’s at stake here – a band that is singlehandedly breaking rank from accepted genres, and carving its own path into history.
The band is currently touring the US – check the dates below to see if they come to a city near you. Click here to Compare & Buy True Widow Tickets at Stereoboard.
4th. Detroit, MI.
5th. Columbus, OH.
6th. Lansing, MI.
7th. Chicago, IL.
8th. Cleveland Heights, OH.
10th. Washington, DC.
11th. Baltimore, MD.
12th. Philadelphia, PA.
13th. Brooklyn, NY.
14th. Pittsburgh, PA.
15th. Cincinnati, OH.
17th. Lawrence, KS.
21st. Dallas, TX. w/ Black Angels & Sleepy Sun
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