House of Warmth started as a high school 4-track project in Bend, Oregon. Now it’s a six-piece heavygaze outfit grinding through Portland’s underground, playing shows twice a month or more. Their new EP, “Gabapentin_1,” dropped February 2nd via Candlepin Records and Flesh & Bone Records — five tracks of slow, brain-splitting shoegaze that sounds both ethereal and deeply unsettling, like a funeral procession bleeding between worlds.
The songs were written during one of the worst stretches of primary songwriter Kayla Gold’s life. They were going in and out of intensive drug treatment, and once they got clean from ketamine, moved back home to Bend to take care of their father, who had recently been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Back in their hometown, Kayla reconnected with high school bassist and best friend Joey Keys, and the two started filling out the tracks with veteran punk drummer Monkey holding down the rhythm section.
The whole thing was cut at COR Studios in Bend during a single eight-hour session — bass, drums, double-tracked vocals and guitar, all banged out in one go. Then the real shaping happened at home. “At home we added another two layers of vocals and two layers of guitars so that both vox and guitar were quad tracked,” Kayla explains. “The home recordings were done using my Tascam 424 as a preamp/mixer. Also added at home were the noisy ambient layers that connect the songs and stand as interludes, just like how we play the songs live.”
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That split between studio and home is what gives “Gabapentin_1” its strange weight. The core is tight and punchy, but those extra layers — the haze, the crawling noise between tracks — turn it into something heavier, more enveloping. Mixing engineer Kel Pinchin (Split Chain, Modern Error) and mastering engineer Corey Coffman (Trauma Ray, Downward) kept that DIY roughness intact while pushing the low end and the vocal harmonies into something massive.
Reuniting with Joey Keys changed the direction of the songs in a real way. “Joey is a very melodic bassist, almost exclusively self-taught. His bass lines turned the songs from straightforward driving shoegaze rhythms into more interesting patterns that Monkey was able to play off of using the double kick,” Kayla says. The two have a deep musical shorthand — they learned songwriting and guitar at the same time back in high school. “There is that instinctual connection wherein he can hear the scale I’m playing in and riff off of it.”
The EP now feels like a document from a different time. “It absolutely feels like looking back on a different time for me and for the band,” Kayla admits. “When we recorded it was really just me and my bassist Joey and then we had a semi-session drummer named Monkey filling out the rhythm section. Now we are a six-piece with a lot heavier songs leaning towards nugaze/metalcore.”
The lyrical focus has shifted too — these songs orbit romantic relationships from that period, whereas now Kayla’s writing pulls tighter around pain and loss. Their father has since passed.
Eight tracks were recorded in total, being released as two separate but intertwined EPs — “Gabapentin_1” and “Gabapentin_2.” What you hear on the first half is heavygaze at its most creeping and celestial — nü-metal weight dragged through layers of shimmering, sorrowful melody. Hooks everywhere, but nothing cheap about them. Can’t wait to be pulled into more of their noise.
Catch the band live at the following gigs:
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