Wound Dresser Releases Album Preview and New Track, “Run With the Wind”

Wound Dresser is a new antifascist neofolk project that has released their first introductory track in advance of their upcoming album. They are coming together as an explicitly antifascist band from the start, helping to build a new antifascist culture of neofolk. We spoke with them about the project and are presenting their first track, and will follow up with them when the full album is released.

How did Wound Dresser come together?

Min Naing: I was booked to play a Halloween-themed show with my Dungeon Synth project, Vaelastrasz, and I ended up being booked with four acoustic acts so I stuck out like a sore thumb. One of the acts approached me dressed up as Morticia Addams and vehemently complimented my Chelsea Wolfe patch. Anytime I tried to talk to him about Chelsea Wolfe he kept on interrupting me by going “You have no idea!” as if he was the only Chelsea Wolfe fan in existence. That was my first interaction with Aliss Getz and I was immediately drawn by his songs.

Sometime later around early December, I decided to hit him up if he was ever interested in writing music together. We had gotten to know each other quite well at that point as it turned out that we had quite compatible music taste so I thought, why not? He was a fan of what I did, checked out my stuff after our show together, and also thought that we had the potential to mesh our styles and influences together to form a band. So here we are.

 

Who was your biggest inspiration?

Min Naing: After listening to Nature & Organisation’s Beauty Reaps the Blood of Solitude, I immediately wanted to make a folk project. My guitar skills are below average, to say the least, so I wasn’t going to accomplish something like this by myself. I wasn’t going to match Michael Cashmore’s beautiful compositions or the otherworldly lyrics of David Tibet, but it was a nice place to start on where I wanted to base myself. The big named acts of Neofolk were ones that I was really inspired by, like a lot of artists, but I was more focused on the lyrical contents of love and hopelessness rather than dousing myself with WWII-fetishism and romanticism that gives the genre a quite polarizing view to some people.

 

What is the lyrical inspiration for your new track, “Run With the Wind?”

Min Naing: When I wrote the song back in December my mind was fluttering with the ideas of escapism. I have lived in the Washington DC area for all of my life and being surrounded by metropolitan, suburban areas have taken a toll on my mental state. I want to be free, be one with this planet when all is said and done and that means leaving an area where infrastructure, construction, and traffic runs rampant. To “Run With the Wind” is to leave the hellscape of the modern world and to let mother nature guide you on her path.

Aliss Getz: Min may have more to add, but I’ve always heard a certain beautiful yet dark sound to our music. It’s also unlike music I have heard in my lifetime. It’s fluid. I don’t know if this is good or bad, I believe time will tell us that, but I stand behind it. “Run With the Wind” is one of the softer songs on the album. It’s raw, as every song has been thus far, but it does present itself in a less provoking way than some of the songs on the upcoming album are.

Min Naing: In a way, I feel like I’m trying to get that sort of vibe with some of these songs. Around the time of recording and writing this I had been listening to a lot of Of the Wand & The Moon and Backworld, especially the latter with Anthems From the Pleasure Park. Having songs like “The Devil’s Plaything” and “Leaves of Autumn” stuck in my head made me use them as palettes for the basic idea and structure of what I want to do with these songs. So at the end of the day, I feel like this album will definitely have that sort of classic Neofolk vibe, but with our own little twist to it.

Aliss Getz: Mother Earth, and all the life that lives about her.

Aliss Getz: Wound Dresser has an album on the way called “Wails of the Widow.” Min sings lead on this song and a few others yet unheard , I sing lead on a few not yet heard as well. This album, and our project, has been very much a mesh of certain aspects of our artistries, so I foresee us continuing to explore and grow with this project. I think it will continue to carry a certain dark beauty like a lily in the middle of a patch of dark woods, as both Min and I are in tune with our darkness, and beauty.

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