Austin-based noise rock outfit Neckbolt was founded last year by multi-instrumentalist Benjamin Krause and vocalist James Roi after Krause relocated to Austin. The band’s name may evoke images of the bolts that held Frankenstein’s monster’s appendages together — or a bolt that connects the guitar neck to its body. For the band, both images are fitting ways to describe their sound and approach: a freakish hodgepodge of musical body parts and ideas rendered in a nightmarish form while still hewing to the rock ‘n’ roll canon.
The Austin-based noise rock outfit’s full-length debut was written and recorded between 2020 and 2021 with Krause playing all of the album’s instrumentation while Roo provided vocals, lyrics and artwork. Slated for a November 5, 2021 release through Bandcamp and Digital Hotdogs, Midwestern Drawl reportedly requires close listening to parse out the informed musicianship that binds the skewed, screeching and skronking elements together.
After they completed the album’s 11 songs, the duo opted to expand the band’s lineup in order to play the material live. Krause and Roo recruited Exhalants‘ Bill Indelicato and Power Pyramid‘s Kilyn Massey and Brent Hodge to complete the band’s lineup.
With their current lineup of Krause, Roo, Indelicato, Massey and Hodge, the band then shot Neckbolt Live! at the Museum of Human Achievement, the forthcoming live performance companion video, which will be released on VHS and online the same day as the album’s release. The members of the band tracked, edited, filmed and mixed the VHS release in six hours in a room without air conditioning on a sweltering Texan summer day.
Despite clocking in at a little under three minutes, Midwestern Drawl‘s latest single “The Lighted Chamber” is centered around an expansive arrangement featuring howled vocals buried in a muscular and forceful mix of buzzing power chords, screeching feedback, angular skronk and propulsive rhythm. Sonically, “The Lighted Chamber” finds the act balancing wild and noisy abandon with tight musicianship.
The live footage features the members of the band in Tyvek jumpsuits in front of psychedelic projections.
