#glasghote

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

Review by Jaden McGinnis

Glasghote may be a new name to some of you, so I'll start by saying this band is very fucking heavy live. Full stacks of amps to give you proper hearing damage. Slow 'n' sludge for the ages! It's no secret I love this band a lot. The guys are real sweethearts and I'm honored to know them and call them friends. Having been to most of their shows, I know the music quite well and have anticipated hearing it on record for a long time.

Photograph by Stephanie Savenkoff

Glasghote's debut, 'Rite Of The Siren' (2018), is front-to-back a monolith of damning doom, a proper full-length record of songs averaging six-minutes a piece. The album is heavy on the gut-wrenching riffs, capturing a guitar and bass that's seriously crushing, with help from the Valhalla fuzz and Ragnarök pedals from Blackhawk Amps. You can really feel the songs, too. They carry you to dark places with awesome caveman strength drumming from Jordan Huston, with vocals like the voice of a thousand dragons from frontman Jake Shaffer, and Chad Johnson assaulting the bass like it's nobody's business.

Rite Of The Siren was recorded at Red Lantern Studios and very well done by Evan Mersky. Everything sits together in the mix, while also abiding to the "everything louder than everything else" theology that I live by. No crazy studio magic, just riffs. It's not hard to see that Glasghote has poured their souls into the music and there's no question this album reflects who they are. It's hard to choose one song to talk about, but "Carrier" is the most Black Sabbath of the bunch. The first half is different from the second, much like you'll hear in songs like "Electric Funeral." One of the riffs you'll hear is so good, so powerful, so effective that it reminds me of what every heavy band out there can dreams of writing.

All seven songs on Rite Of The Siren are so good, I just want to crank up this volume and doom the fuck out -- neighbors be damned. It will be out on tape, vinyl and CD on Doom Stew Records on October 30th and you can Glasghote play it all live that same day during their album release party at Tonic Lounge in Portland. Until then, you can hear it all in this exclusive worldwide debut via Doomed & Stoned!

Interview & Photos by Stephanie Savenkoff

I sat down with Glasghote at Hungry Tiger in Portland, Oregon recently to find out more about this young, exciting emerging band. We sat out on the patio, enjoying one of the last balmy nights of the fall. At the table with me: Jake Shaffer on lead guitar and vocals, Jordan Huston on drums, and Chad Johnson on bass. Their debut album Rite of the Siren was just days away from release on Doom Stew Records and found the band psyched for the big release show on Heavy Tuesday at The Tonic Lounge.

I asked the group what they wanted and what their goals were for the band. Overwhelmingly, they all agreed that they wanted to tour forever. Like most bands, they want to be able to make a living from their music, to create and perform full-time. "Playing Psycho Las Vegas would be nice," Jordan says, grinning. Oh, and of course, they want to rule the world. Recognizing that music is often an escape, Glasghote just want people to rock out to their music and party like there's no tomorrow. "We want everyone to have a good time, whether it’s the people in the crowd, the sound guy, or the bartender." Furthermore, Jordan says he wants people to be "grossed out." I'd never heard something like that before, so I asked for clarification.

"Sometimes we'll write something and decide that it’s too major, too clean," he explains, "So then we'll incrementally pare it down until we find something that doesn’t sound right." They want a dirty sound, friction, something that makes you uncomfortable. "We want it to be intriguing and have elements of dissonance and distortion." One of their key influences, Primitive Man, is intentionally disgusting and gross in this regard.

I asked if there was a punk element to their sound, if they wanted to rub people the wrong way on purpose. "That could be part of it," Jordan muses. The members of Glasghote came to their sound from different backgrounds. Jake grew up listening to punk and agreed that he liked that style for its dirtiness and its abrasiveness. "Our approach is to try to bring something different to their music, something that makes it stand out and, to that end, make it as gross as possible." Jordan confirms he wanted their music to be “just nasty and disgusting.” Chad adds he wants people to think, “Damn, that’s gross and fucking heavy.” When it's all said and done, the band just wants to shake the room when they play and it’s an added bonus if people’s necks (and ears) hurt the next day from all the headbanging.

I have watched Glasghote perform over the last couple of years. My first experience was at Ash Street Saloon. I also caught them at The Tonic Lounge a few times. There has been continuous improvement, cohesion, and a stronger synergy every time I see them play. I asked about the recording experience. They went to Red Lantern Studios in North Portland and were very happy with the people, the work, and the final product. "Evan Mersky was fun to work with and everyone on his team was amazing," I was told, "He made everything sound great." The setup is pretty much DIY, "he wasn’t this kind of crazy producer."

Asked about the songs on Rite Of The Siren, I discovered that Jake and Jordan write the majority of the lyrics, which tends to come last in the compositional process. In terms of the music itself, the guys all write collectively. Jake said he will come to the group with a riff and then they work together to flesh it out. “Let’s try this,” Jordan will say. “What about this note?” Then Chad will figure something out on the bass and they'll switch the structure of the song to accommodate. The music comes first and then Jake will try to bring fantasy and sci-fi themes to the songs and mythological elements that seem to fit.

Like most bands, Glasghote said they often annoy each other, offend each other, and get in a band fight, then they all go home. "Argument is part of the creative process, but we all come back together in the end," they confide. "Honesty is much better for the music than just agreeing to something we don’t like, so we actually try to be as respectful about our disagreements as possible."

I joked with the guys, suggesting that what they do is community service because they're doing a public good for essentially no money. In turn, Glasghote said their audience is doing the community service by giving them a platform to play their music. Chad suggested they were a charity and in an attempt to be funny, I declared them a non-profit. Like most performers, these musicians all admit to getting nervous before a show, but once they start that all goes away. After all, bands and their listeners want the same thing: to be able to close their eyes and disappear for a while. They just want to headbang.

There's been a lot of talk around Portland about the important of having new all-ages venues. The guys think it would be a great thing to build up a scene for young people. "We've all experienced the frustration of not being able to hear the music because the venue served alcohol and we were minors and couldn’t get in." There seems to be an appreciation for places that allow minors that have a separate bar area in Portland, but they aren’t keen on the fact that the underage section is usually closest to the stage. Asked about their favorite venues, Glasghote says it really comes down to liking the places that can "do sound."

I finally got around to asking the questions I should have at the very beginning, about how they met each other and became a band. Jordan and Jake used to work together at The Sunshine Tavern, where Jordan was the cook and Jordan was the line cook. "We started talking about Weedeater and showing each other music," then started playing in another band that quickly collapsed. "The music was all over the place, genre-wise," they recall. "All of the bandmates wanted different things and just weren’t on the same page, so the writing fell through." Jake and Jordan decided that doom was their favorite flavor of heavy, so they started jamming together in the basement where they roomed.

Shortly after, Chad moved to Portland from Colorado and, randomly enough, ended up working at the same restaurant. "I was walking down a hallway where the restrooms were, wearing an Uncle Acid and the deadbeats shirt, and I ran into Jordan." Asked what shirt he was wearing and when Chad answered, Jordan immediately issued an invitation: “Do you want to play music with us?” Chad said, “Yeah, I’ve been trying to find someone to play with since I moved here and I fuckin’ can’t find anyone.” Jake and Jordan had a clear idea of the direction they wanted to go in, so they hung out with Chad for a bit to feel out his thoughts and intentions, ensuring they were a match.

On Labor Day, the three attended a party at Laurelhurst Park and ended up getting drunk talking about Graveyard, then playing Graveyard. "We were drinking and watching some hippie kids with light-up hula hoops, you know, just laughing together." This ended up cementing their relationship. At this point, I think it is important to note that these guys are truly friends. Some people get together to jam, but they're not necessarily close. By contrast, these guys all went to Colorado for Chad’s recent wedding, to be a part of his special day.

Asked their musical influences, the usual suspects were on display, with a couple of surprises. They all agree on Black Sabbath. Jordan said his number one is Thou. Then there are "the easy and obvious Sleep and Electric Wizard, without a doubt," but that was in high school. After that, it was Thou. They opened the door for everything. "Thou are more melodic and riffy and not as bluesy and pentatonic" as the aforementioned bands. "It’s more of a progressive doom," he clarifies. "It’s not weird time signatures, but big chords and riffs and some of its clean, like Fórn"-- another of his favorites.

Jordan has a friend in a band called Hell, based in Salem, Oregon. "The music goes clean and is very melodic and sad and then moves into a heavy sound." He loves the duality. Jake said he started off with punk in middle school, then migrated to metal, fell out of love with metal, then fell in love all over again. The thundering heaviness of Conan was largely responsible for this. "They tell extravagant, crazy stories with their lyrics and they are all about heavy riffs."

Like most people, Glasghote likes anything Matt Pike does, from Sleep to High on Fire. They describe Matt Pike as Tony Iommi 2.0. Chad sheepishly admitted to being influenced by Blink 182 when he was in middle school and high school. He plays bass, because of his admiration for Mark Hoppus. Then he became interested in Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Guns 'n' Roses (though he hates the latter now, save for Slash). Jordan mentioned Jimmy Buffett: "Not the Margaritaville stuff, but older stuff like 'Kick It In Second Wind' from the 1976 Havana Daydreamin’ album.

We spoke about Glasghote's image and how that has evolved. "First, we liked the idea of just putting our initials on the songs we released," but realized they wanted their music to get out there and be known, not relegated to underground obscurity with limited availability. They decided to use their names. "That said, we do like the idea of being identified more as a sound, rather than an image."

After a couple of hours, I exhausted my questions and things dissolved into chatting and drinking, so we left things there. If you're ever around for a Heavy Tuesday or one of the many gigs Glasghote play around the Rose City, do yourself a favor: go see them. Then close your eyes, bang your head, and throw down your worries into the crushing sludge factory they operate so well.

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