A Must-Hear for Fans of Chelsea Wolfe and King Woman
There are two kinds of heavy bands: the ones that make a lot of noise and the ones that drag you somewhere you didn’t know you needed to go. Cwfen (pronounced ‘Coven’) are the latter, and Sorrows is a record that doesn’t just crush – it haunts long after the final note.
The allure of Cwfen’s sound lies in contrasts: the glacial ferocity of Amenra, with the velvet-and-razor vocals of King Woman, and the rotting grandeur of Type O Negative. It’s as hypnotic as it is harrowing, but somehow even better than the sum of those parts.
Since emerging from Glasgow’s underground just 18 months ago, Cwfen have built a solid reputation, selling out shows and pulling growing audiences into their doom-laden fever dream. Released in October, the band’s debut single Reliks was a hit with fans and critics, landing a spot on Kerrang!’s release of the week playlist. And rightly so. Their sound devours and delights in equal measure. And people are craving more.
Today sees the band share new single ‘Bodies’ with vocalist and rhythm guitarist Agnes Alder stating,
“Bodies was one of the first songs I’d written for Cwfen. I’d gone through a period of significant change in my life and had burned out to the point of caring a lot less about things that had previously been important to me when I was younger. As I was writing, I’d imagined this sort of vast, feminine cosmic horror. Sort of the opposite of what women are supposed to be. And I had this thought: what if, instead of being told to stay small and keep producing, a woman took up the biggest space possible and just… consumed? Almost a black-hole-sized matriarch hoovering up everything until there was nothing left. It was fun to think about this sort of monstrous feminine presence that can’t be stopped. So the song was sort of an exploration of those feelings, a catharsis of sorts. And permission to be terrifying.”
Sorrows lives in the space around doom where the weight of the riffs is matched by the weight in your chest, where the lyrics and the songwriting are as important as the music itself. Loud and crushing, yet sharp enough to stick in your head for days. It builds, burns, collapses, resurrects. Big on riffs, bigger on feeling. The kind of songs you carry with you. Agnes Alder bears her claws one minute, then whispers the next, as the band follows like a storm front, rising, breaking, drowning you in the weight of it.
“We never set out to write an album. We were just four friends making music we wanted to hear. But then Sorrows emerged, and when it did, it pulled us into its orbit. We couldn’t ignore it,” says Agnes Alder. “When we stopped trying to fit into any one space, what came out was this beautiful mix of dark and light. Something visceral and cathartic.”
The songs have range. From the guttural Penance to the lush Whispers, to the feral Wolfsbane and the insurrectionist Rite. It includes a long anticipated reworking of Embers and Bodies, the two self-recorded demos that launched them into the scene with a bang and that fans already adore. Intricate vocal arrangements, heavy and harsh guitars, a mix of atmosphere and heft, produced by the band alongside Kevin Hare at Deep Storm Productions, and mastered by James Plotkin. It punches above its weight for a debut.
Pre-order ’Sorrows’:
Vinyl/CD – https://cargorecordsdirect.co.uk/products/cwfen-sorrows
Bandcamp – https://cwfen.bandcamp.com/album/sorrows
Digital – https://lnk.to/Cwfen_Sorrows