For over fifteen years, New England’s When The Deadbolt Breaks has lurked in the dark corners of underground metal. With a doom style both psychedelic and unsettling, their music has been tagged as many different things; heavy, daunting, overwhelming, unnerving – while the band shows singer/guitarist Aaron Lewis’s gritty vision of life on the subcultural fringes of New England society. Following five highly acclaimed studio records, a split and a remix album to date, November 26th will see When The Deadbolt Breaks release their brand new album “As Hope Valley Burns”. The band has carved a niche for themselves within the interplay of extreme genres. Having played the SXSW, New England Stoner & Doom Fest to name just a few, they are as well no less at home in doom and grind than they are in pummeling sludge or ambient soundscaping, casting forth triumphant riffs or proffering murder-dirge nods at a volume level that can only be considered violent. When The Deadbolt Breaks have always struck a balance between the ugly and beauty; long and heavy compositions wade through detuned, discordant and murky sludge metal before shifting into melodic ambient space rock territories, and back again; “This album is a unique one for When The Deadbolt Breaks. We have pushed our boundaries sonically”, band mastermind Lewis reveals. “The heavy is heavier, and the mellow, spacial parts are even more so. Akin to our first few records, we have returned to more aggressive drumming, and psychedelic spaces, yet this record has a certain depth and maturity to it that was missing in the past”.
