Release Date May 29th, 2026
Format CD/LP/Digital
Genre Acoustic, Dark Folk
Origin USA
Uada formed in Portland, Oregon in 2014 around vocalist and guitarist Jake Superchi. They signed to Eisenwald in time for the 2016 debut "Devoid Of Light", which pushed the band to the front of American melodic black metal. That album brought the hooded anonymity, the twin guitar leads and the long, spiralling tracks where melody always led the charge. "Cult Of A Dying Sun" followed in 2018. In 2020 "Djinn" stretched the songwriting into longer, more hypnotic territory, and "Crepuscule Natura" arrived in 2023. Constant touring across North America and Europe built the band a live following to match the albums.
"Interwoven" takes one track from each of those four albums and strips it down to acoustic guitars, strings and a sung voice. Two covers close it out, all in a little over forty minutes. The production is warm and intimate. Fingerpicked notes and cello swells press right up against the ear, and reverb hangs off the vocals like fog over a cold river. Melody was always the core of this band, and here it stands naked. The lead line of "Devoid Of Light" rings out unplugged and is as catchy as it ever was under the blast beats. "The Purging Fire" turns into a slow, candlelit lament.
"Djinn" opens the album at close to twelve minutes, its modal figures circling on and on, and anyone who showed up for riffs will be checking the clock long before the end. The singing is the real gamble. It's a low, weathered voice with a dark folk ache nobody could have predicted from this band, and it holds up. On "The Dark (Winter)" it hovers over mournful strings with a frostbitten loneliness. With the distortion gone, the lyrics about death, spirit and decay come through line by line, and they hit heavier in the quiet.
Rome's "Der Brandtaucher" slides in as if it were written for this album, its martial neofolk gloom intact. Nirvana's "Something In The Way" is the obvious pick that will make some eyes roll, a song covered to death, and Uada drag it somewhere colder and more funereal, with the cello groaning beneath the hook. Opening with the longest track is a risky call. Parking the covers at the end makes them an epilogue and lets the four originals flow as one body first. Loose, rough in spots and sung straight from the gut, "Interwoven" is a brave detour that sits proudly next to the heavy albums on the shelf.
|8.3
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