As soon as you’re already acquainted with the amazing story behind their name, it’s time to take our friendship with WOJTEK to the next level. The grinding, doom filled sludgecore beast is back with new EP “Hymn For The Leftovers”, and we’re here to praise its vicious offering that switched things up a bit by incorporating more variety compared to their previous work and anything you’ve heard in this god-forsaken genre. We have teamed up with the band to give you a special commentary on the new outing,
WOJTEK was born in 2019 in Padova, northern Italy, from 5 musicians previously involved in different local bands. The arsenal of the combat bear consist in a muddy groove metal with a dark and gloomy taste, including glimpses of doom, stoner and noise. Seek shelter in the closest trench and cover your ears, we are coming for you and it’s gonna be louder than ever.
The second EP of the Paduan band, one of the most feral metal acts that has emerged in recent years from the Italian musical undergrowth. “Hymn for the Leftovers” will be out on April 10 for Violence In The Veins and Teschio Dischi, distributed by Shove Records.
Commetned the band:
We started writing songs for the sole purpose of putting ourselves on the road to play them live and grow as a band. There is no concept behind this release, perhaps just a common thread lead by cynicism and frustration coming from daily life, modern slavery and routines without gratification.
Wojtek has been founded in May 2019, so we are a rather “young” band. Anyway we knew each other for a long time before the project started. The singer, the drummer and one of the guitarist used to play together for more than 10 years in different projects, that’s how they got in contact with the bassist and the other guitarist: by sharing the stage more than once in different shows! This band is born with the sole purpose to hit the road and play live, so we are feeling really proud of ourselves when we look back and see that in just 12 months we achieved 2 EPs, a couple of tours (could have been more but this Covid screwed everything…) and a good number of shows. What’s frustrating at the moment is not doing what we do best: pushing down the gas pedal really hard.
WOJTEK is: Mattia Zambon: vocals, Morgan Zambon: guitars and backing vocals, Riccardo Zulato: guitars and backing vocals, Simone Carraro: bass and backing vocals, Enrico Babolin: drums
We are really proud of ‘Hymn for the Leftovers’. Once again we chose to keep things totally under our control during the recording session. No studio, no sound engineer, no manager, fuck it! This EP is 100% DIY recorded, and even for mixing and master we asked for the help of a friend, Riccardo’s bandmate in his parallel project (Lorø). The result is feeling really personal, with a trademark sinister sound that we love. The new songs are more fine-tuned than our previous s/t EP: this time we have been able to create some solid tunes with all the elements that we love:
𝑀𝑢𝑑𝑑𝑦, 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑜𝑣𝑦 𝑠𝑙𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑡-ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑓𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑓𝑒𝑙𝑡 𝑚𝑒𝑙𝑜𝑑𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑙𝑦𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑠.
Honestly: we just love that long, trippy, nightmarish intro. It’s a really brutally honest song..a pissed statement. A long sense of vertigo that slowly transforms into some sonic madness and finally explode in a desperate whipping ending..it’s strange to say but it’s a very intimate one and probably a sum of ourself as a band.
Curse: born from lyrics written by Morgan in a difficult period of his life, completed by other equally heartbreaking and desperate verses from Mattia.
The slowliness and heaviness of some riffs that Riccardo brought at the rehearsal room were simply perfect for the lyrics, creating the most desperate song of our Ep.
Crawling: perhaps the most difficult song to label out from the EP. Lyrics came once again from difficult times and experiences of self destruction. The riffing is relentless but with catchy openings that gives a yin and yang mood to the listener.
Striving: this song is exactly the opposite. From its very beginning our aim is to slowly crush the listener with circular riffs on a deadly midtempo. Lyrics makes no exception, as we delivered a piece of blind nonsense rage for this one. Towards the end there’s a breathtaking stop n go that leads to an end full of pathos and desperation and then the song slowly fades away…
Empty Veins: Empty veins is probably our favorite song out of Hymn for the Leftovers.
It is perhaps the most “standard” track, but which does not give up the desperate constant with which we wanted to impregnate this ep. A solid and fast riffing, claustrophobic, but that at intervals breathes with very airy guitar leads.
Lyrics are inspired by a recent tragic loss in Mattia’s life.
Plans for 2020
2020 will be an hard year for music around Europe but most of all in Italy. If we’re lucky we will be able to meet in the rehearsal room right after the summer, but who knows when we will be able to play again on a stage. It’s just too early to predict. In any case when the hardest phase of the lockdown will end we will focus on a video and on writing new music as well.
Local music scene
In Italy a LOT of venues were closing before shit happened. Now we are waiting to see who will survive after Covid. Luckily, our scene is one of the most prolific ones in Italy right after punk hc, so we are still confident that there will be a lot of solidarity in order to have a fast restart in 2021.
COVID-19 and its impact on local music scene
Man, that sucks. Everything stopped from one day to another, and left us in a limbo where we don’t even know when we could restart to see our friends and family. Italian music scene has been brutally stopped, except for the ones who doesn’t need to meet in a reharsal room to continue their projects. But does it makes sense to produce music that you can’t play live?
Other bands worth a check – some early 2020 recommendations to feed our hungry souls and tireless ears
Nudist: we should have been on tour with them by the time we are answering this questions. Check out their latest album “incomplete”.
Wows: their latest work “Very Sacrum” is a blast! If you want a really warm and analogic trip on the thin line between post and black metal give it a spin!
