By the time Rob sent Jeff and George the name The Great Ox in the Belly of A Snake one night, they already had most of a new record and years of Vulturepeak behind them. Rob and Jeff had been playing together under that name since 2012. George joined in 2020, adding bass and noise to what had started as a two-piece and learning to move inside the long improvisations Rob and Jeff had built their writing around. “Euphoric Dread“, out October 2, is the first record carrying the new name.
The album’s second track, “Lavish Torment“, is already out and available to stream, with a video online as well.
Rob’s first message to us called it “7 Songs of chaotic noise thrash with some sludge and doom”, and yeah, their first single, absolutely rips. Noise, sludge, metal and hardcore crash into each other in one ugly, chest-caving mess, with zero interest in sanding down the edges.
Brutal, nasty and fully committed, it sounds like a crew that’s been around the block a few times and still has plenty of teeth left.
The current setup has him on vocals, guitar and electronics, George on bass and noise, and Jeff on drums and percussion. They are based in Northeastern Pennsylvania around Wilkes-Barre, and remain independent.
Nobody in the band gives quite the same answer for when Vulturepeak actually stopped.
For Rob, the old name had never carried much weight. He and Jeff already had songs when they came up with it and wanted something they could put on a flyer so they could start playing. Around a year before “Euphoric Dread”, changing it came up a few times. Then the conversation went quiet.
“The name The Great Ox… is something I came up with and brought to them,” he said. “I think at first it was a little jarring but after the explanation and hearing out where I was coming from they were down with it.”
He could easily imagine these same seven songs coming out as Vulturepeak.
“This could have been a Vulturepeak release for sure but to make a change like this there was no reason that I saw to wait. At the end of the day we are still the same group of people that wrote under the name Vulturepeak but the change reflects more of what the songs and energy is about.”
Jeff had started thinking about the change before Rob brought in the name. He came to practice after spending some time on what was and was not working, musically and visually. A blank slate appealed to him. He was still excited about playing with Rob and George, only with fewer expectations attached to what Vulturepeak was supposed to be.
They sat with that idea for a while.
One song gave Jeff a clearer idea of where things might be heading. “Threshold Dweller” is the longest track on “Euphoric Dread“, at 5:50, and was among the songs written while they were still Vulturepeak. Jeff found himself playing with more patience and paying closer attention to the difference between the quiet and loud sections.
“I personally have felt much more comfortable operating at max volume for most of my life and writing quieter sections made me feel vulnerable and exposed in ways I wasn’t used to, but it feels like something I need to be exploring.”
When we went back to Rob about the same song, he recognised what Jeff was hearing. His own line runs further back. “Threshold Dweller” sounded to him like an extension of things already happening in “Frozen River” and “Bright Eyes” from “Snake Body”. It still had a different feel, and he understood why Jeff heard it as part of the push towards the new name.
Jeff’s follow-up placed the change somewhere across that period too. They had started shifting direction while they were still writing as Vulturepeak. Once Rob brought in The Great Ox in the Belly of A Snake and explained what he meant by it, the name fitted where they were already going.
George’s moment came later and was much easier to pin to a night. The possibility of a change had been around for a while, but when Rob sent the name with his explanation, George knew they were going to use it.
Musically, he still hears “Euphoric Dread” close to Vulturepeak. Some of what changed was happening on stage, where they had begun playing with lighting and imagery more heavily. Rob and Jeff had also discussed the possibility of starting another project instead of changing the existing band’s name. In the end, they went with the new name.
That leaves three versions sitting next to each other. Rob thinks the record could comfortably have been Vulturepeak. Jeff can point to “Threshold Dweller” and changes already happening in the writing. George remembers the new name arriving after the music and live presentation had started moving.
Their comparisons with the older records are just as loose.
Rob hears “Euphoric Dread” coming out of both “Filament Palace” and “Wrapped In Tar”.
“The energy is the same but the sorrow and anguish has increased. From my perspective we were playing in two different areas with ‘Filament Palace’ or ‘Wrapped In Tar’ and ‘Euphoric Dread’ is just the offspring of those two releases.”
George puts “Filament Palace” and the new record very close together. “Wrapped In Tar” sounds further away to him because of the noise used there.
Jeff hears the habits that come from playing together for years all over the record. He also calls “Euphoric Dread” possibly the most abrasive collection they have made. Some experiments from these sessions have already taken the trio into other ideas, and he expects the follow-up to make a bigger break from Vulturepeak than this record does.
All of that history starts with Rob and Jeff. They first played together in bands in Greene County, Pennsylvania, before both moving to the northeastern part of the state. There were stretches when they could not play together, then in 2012 they finally started writing again. Between May and August that year they wrote and recorded their first Vulturepeak record.
Jeff did not have a large plan for what the band needed to become. He was happy to be writing songs with Rob again. The immediate goal was to get enough together to start playing live and see where it went.
For Rob, the method was already familiar. Start playing, catch whatever happens in the room, then find the song afterwards.
“Seeing what happens in the moment and structuring it from there. But the moment of improv and diving into the creative realm was and still is everything.”
A lot was happening outside the band at the same time. Rob mentions death, friends lost to suicide and drugs, his own drug addiction, deaths in their families and relationships ending. He believes those experiences were part of what connected him and Jeff while they were writing even when they did not talk about them directly.
“As people we have grown a lot but at the end of the day, we still deal with the same underlying pain. Maybe we have found new ways to face it but we both return to what we have always done together to express it.”
The way they communicate has become less verbal with time. Jeff can anticipate where Rob is going with a phrase or an idea. They still spend long stretches at their practice spot improvising with no need to turn every good moment into a finished song. Some parts eventually get pulled out and worked on. Plenty stay between the people in the room.
George had to find a way into that when he joined in 2020. “George was able to jump right in & contribute during these scenarios after joining us, which really isn’t easy to do,” Jeff said.
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George’s own version is funnier. The first thing he changed was that the band suddenly had a bass player, and Rob and Jeff had the extra job of teaching him things they were already working on.
He also walked into a friendship that had existed for years.
“I feel the biggest thing I inherited is the friendship and family the band is and the commitment involved whether it’s playing music or talking about our own life stuff going on. We don’t just show up to jam something or write songs, they are two guys I love and consider family.”
Rob and Jeff still have what George calls a “secret language”. He is learning it as they keep writing and recording together.
His bass/noise credit is quite literal too. The bass line has to survive first. After that he looks for empty space where another sound can fit.
“Not messing up the bass lines I need to play. I always want to add more noise, but finding where it fits without sacrificing the notes I need to be playing is the challenge. I enjoy finding a space of air I can put something to add to the feeling and energy of the song.”
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That setup gives the current band more moving parts than the original duo had in 2012. Guitar and electronics can run alongside George’s bass and added noise, with Jeff able to leave more space in songs such as “Threshold Dweller”. The new record still spends plenty of time at the loud end. Jeff’s discomfort with those quieter sections tells you more about the band’s old default than another pile of genre tags would.
George singles out “Foul Friend & I” when asked which song would have sat most awkwardly on a Vulturepeak release. Vinny Savoca from DOUR recorded its lead guitar and solos. DOUR and the band have been friends for years, and Vinny has played the song with them live a couple of times. He is not a permanent member, so whether they can do that version on stage depends on whether he is available.
The subject running through “Euphoric Dread” comes from another part of Rob’s life.
None of the songs written as Vulturepeak or The Great Ox in the Belly of A Snake were written while he was in active addiction. Rob wrote this record after years of being clean and finding that the person he had been during addiction did not simply disappear with the drug use.
“The album is an accumulation of past experiences and then the post addiction era of being clean and dealing with the person that addiction has shaped. I may not be using anymore but for years the person I was and the things I was doing for the drug shaped me. When you are clean for a long period of time and you are paying attention to your self you will see this.”
He describes the songs as looking inward at things that are still present.
The album title grew out of two related thoughts. One starts with a phrase Rob returns to several times: “The only way out is through.” He connects euphoria with reaching a place without suffering, and dread with knowing what the path there may involve.
The other meaning is directly about heroin.
“This also references the euphoric rush of heroin that after years of being clean that is a dread of that euphoric feeling because the other side of that is known.”
“Wound To Be Torn Apart” and “Lavish Torment” were written during the same period and overlap thematically. Some of that vocabulary comes out in Rob’s writing before he has completely worked out why. The trio chose “Lavish Torment” for the first video because they all thought it was a good entrance into the record.
Three songs also carry samples from an interview with Ariel conducted by Eric Bridges for his YouTube channel Other Side. Bridges spends time on the streets talking with people in active addiction. According to Rob, Ariel was still using when she spoke with him.
“Ariels voice stood out to me and I connected with the things that she was saying and felt that it would give that voice to the record that I couldn’t. Much love goes out to her and Eric for agreeing to be apart of this.”
The samples appear on tracks two, four and seven. The band have given no further information about Ariel’s life or what happened after the interview.
Rob’s meaning for The Great Ox in the Belly of A Snake comes from the same struggle he is writing about.
“The name carries an esoteric weight, an ox swallowed whole, strength consumed by the lower nature within us all.”
He thinks of the Great Ox as the greater version of yourself you are trying to reach. The snake is the lower nature, the shortcomings that can swallow it.
“A driving force in the creation of the music and sound we create is this struggle of being consumed by what some call our lowest nature or our shortcomings. We have an idea of this greater self that being The Great Ox that we strive for and then there is the snake that being our lowest nature suffocating all good that might come. The only way out is through and it incredibly hard at times to face the snake and as soon as our eyes divert we are in darkness once again.”
Jeff had at one point considered the possibility that the album would remain a Vulturepeak record. Once the new name was agreed, the combination of the subject matter and what they were doing visually made sense to him under The Great Ox in the Belly of A Snake. Rob, answering the same question separately, did not remember a version where the record stayed Vulturepeak. Both answers can be true from where each person was sitting.
The trio recorded and mixed “Euphoric Dread” themselves. Jesse Nichols mastered it at Atomic Garden Recording Studios. They had already worked with Atomic Garden on “Filament Palace”, which Jack Shirley mixed and mastered.
Rob likes recording and playing with sound, and goes further with that side of things in his solo project Masoller. He still likes having another set of ears involved before a record is finished. Jack and Jesse had both worked on records the band enjoyed, which was enough reason to go back there.
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The cover comes from xerox artist NEGATIVEMEDITATION. Rob liked the work, but the artwork was not part of the decision to change the band’s name. George’s memory of the band gradually doing more with lighting and imagery belongs to an earlier stretch of the transition.
The visual side carries into their live setup. They bring personal lighting and ask venues to keep the stage as dark as possible. The practical setup is guitar, bass and drums, one vocal microphone and a DI for samples, with around 15 to 20 minutes needed to set up and sets running roughly 25 to 30 minutes.
By now that setup has been on bills with Planning for Burial, GEL, The Callous Daoboys, Dreamwell, Minsk, Massa Nera, Dumb Waiter, Toothless, Drowned God, Horseburner, Lástima, Clamfight, Dead Empires, Entry, Bloodiest, Black Friday Death Count, Subservientdominance, Pithair, Tungsten Beach and Manikineter.
Some of those local connections stretch back well into the Vulturepeak years. Their split with L.M.I. came out on Glowing Window in May 2021. The relationship with Thom from the label started earlier, after they met while playing The Otherside in Wilkes-Barre around 2016 or 2017.
“He has been a huge supporter of what we have been doing ever since. Huge thanks to Thom!” Rob said.
On September 18, The Great Ox in the Belly of A Snake played Union Vapors in Dickson City with Planning for Burial and Blush Culture. It was a 9PM, $10, 21+ show, and the listing still included “formerly Vulturepeak”. A useful bit of information when the same people have spent years playing the same part of Pennsylvania under another name.
“Euphoric Dread” comes out October 2. Jeff already thinks the biggest musical change may still be ahead of them.
“I actually think our follow up to Euphoric Dread will sonically be a bigger shift from what we had done prior as Vulturepeak. Some of the experimentation during the writing sessions for this record have sent us in different directions we’re pretty excited to explore.”
