TWO BASSES, DRUMS, BEWITCHED DOOM AND MISERY. Formed in 2021 in the grim North West of the UK, Warlockhunt blend heavy, atmospheric soundscapes with pure DIY passion. Not long after the third edition of their very own North West Doom Fest in Chester, frontwoman La Rainey sat down with us to discuss stolen instruments, filming music videos with plastic guns, and why two bass guitars are infinitely better than one.

LINE-UP:

La Rainey – Bass & Vocals

Murky Watters – Bass

Toby Sure – Drums

Cocktails, Red Wallpaper & The Saddle Pub

Heavy Hags: It is so great to finally sit down and do this interview after meeting at your festival, the North West Doom Fest in Chester! The atmosphere there was fantastic. I loved the room—it had this wonderfully atmospheric, gothic vibe with the red wallpaper and black sconces, which perfectly suited the sombre music. How many times have you run the festival now?

La Rainey: Thank you so much for coming and for supporting us! That was actually our third edition. We already have the headliners and most of the billing sorted for the fourth one next year. We also had a spontaneous idea after a few too many cocktails to put on a smaller, one-day event this summer, so we’re keeping busy.

HHs: That’s great! How did you even get started with organizing a festival?

La Rainey: Well, my bandmate Murky has been in bands forever and used to put on gigs. He lives in Conwy, and unfortunately, the music scene in North Wales isn’t what it used to be—the venues have mostly disappeared. He started putting gigs on to get people over there, using the fact that Wales is beautiful as a selling point.

Later, we started hanging out at The Saddle pub, which is our local rock hub where I live in Chester. They let us use the upstairs room for free. At first, we just thought, “Hey, we can play here ourselves for free.” We’d play, Murky’s other band would play, and mid-week we’d host a few other bands who asked to get on the bill. The very first Doom Fest we did was just a one-day event, and we were so pleased with the response. Everyone told us we had to do it again. Coming out of Covid, people were slow to start attending live gigs again, but fast forward to now and we’ve successfully completed our third edition. The second and third iterations both expanded into two days, so we’re really happy with how it’s growing.

HHs: Who handles all the booking and organization for the festival?

La Rainey: Murky and I split it between us. A lot of it just comes down to going to gigs, playing shows, and meeting people. We try to book bands within the genre that we personally love. There’s a lot of messaging back and forth, and eventually, it all comes together.

For example, Pantheist, who played on Friday this year, is a really big band in the scene. We supported them a year or two ago, and when you meet people and chat, you build a friendship. Because of those connections, they were happy to come down and play. Now that word has spread, bands are actually starting to approach us to ask if they can play.

“Honestly, I think we could have learned to play the drums ourselves faster than we figured out how to program that drum machine!”

Lockdowns, Stolen Basses & “Doom Pop”

HHs: Two bass guitars, drums, bewitched doom, and misery. How did that unique concept first come together?

La Rainey: It started during Covid, back in those dark times when you were only allowed one walk a day and had to stay within a strict social “bubble.” My bubble was Murky. He was working all the way through lockdown, and I work in a school, so early on we spent a lot of time walking around the mountains in Conwy, just being a bit silly to get through it. We thought, “Let’s take some photos and start a band.” Murky wanted to put it online immediately, and I had to stop him because we hadn’t actually written any music yet!

My son had left his bass guitar at our place when he went off to Bangor University. I picked it up and was surprised to find that writing lyrics came quite easily to me. Given the time period, there was a lot of heavy stuff to sing about. At first, it was just the two of us using a drum machine because we didn’t have a drummer. Honestly, I think we could have learned to play the drums ourselves faster than we figured out how to program that machine! Our first double-single release was completely drumless. I just really fell in love with the entire process.

HHs: Had you been a musician before starting Warlockhunt, or did you step straight into playing bass and singing?

La Rainey: Murky has played bass since he was a teenager in thrash bands, but I had always been strictly on the audience side of the stage. I’ve always loved going to concerts, but I was perfectly happy being a fan. However, I realized that the intense emotion and immersion you feel as an audience member extends to the stage as well—the adrenaline is incredible. As for the singing, it just evolved. I always imagined I was Janis Joplin in some sort of fairy tale, but I’d never actually done anything about it. When we started the band, I just thought, “Well, who else is going to sing this miserable stuff?”

HHs: Where did the name Warlockhunt come from? Is it true it started as a joke?

La Rainey: It completely started as a joke! We were talking about witch hunts, and we thought, “Well, what about a male witch? A warlock hunt.” But when you say it out loud quickly, it sounds a bit… rude. I suggested “Warlock Hunter” because I wasn’t entirely sure about the joke, but the original name stuck because it was just so funny to say. It’s a bit silly, but I don’t know any other band with that name, so it makes us recognizable!

Fake Moustaches, War & The Welsh Hills

HHs: What was the very first song you wrote together, and what inspires your lyrics?

La Rainey: The very first things we did were “Sleep” and “Heal,” which came out as a split double-single. “Sleep” was inspired by going to see Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining. It was a great, supernatural film that transported you into this ethereal atmosphere.

For other songs, a lot of inspiration comes from supporting friends through tough times—like a bad breakup—and from the world around us. You only have to turn on the news to see awful things happening, and it gives you immediate, heavy material to write about. For example, we put out a song called “Whispering Words”, which I wrote when Ukraine was invaded. Looking at what’s happening in Gaza now, you just find yourself asking why this is still happening. After that EP, we released our album, Susurrus, and then we put out Prey last year.

We record everything in a wonderful little studio over in Penmaenmawr in North Wales. The producer puts us all in one room to track the instruments live, and then I go into the vocal booth. We usually track everything in a couple of days because we hammer it out in rehearsals for weeks beforehand to make sure we’re as sharp as possible.

HHs: I love the music video for “Sacred Skin.” The black-and-white aesthetic and the church location create such a powerful atmosphere. Where did you film that?

La Rainey: That was filmed at a beautiful little historic church out in the mountains of North Wales. It’s open to the public, though they still hold services there on Sundays. We walked up there carrying our bass cases like they were coffins!

Generally, we love having fun with our videos. You should also check out the video for “Sad Hill Blues.” We travelled to Burgos, near Bilbao, to visit the Sad Hill Cemetery where the final shootout of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was filmed. We turned up armed with fake moustaches and plastic toy guns to reenact the final Clint Eastwood scenes. We definitely have a laugh with it.

“You can’t help but draw inspiration from the standing stones, the hillforts, and the deep history of the landscape. It bleeds into the atmosphere of the music.”

HHs: As a fellow folklore and history enthusiast, I have to ask: does the landscape and history of Northwest England and North Wales shape Warlockhunt’s identity?

La Rainey: Absolutely. We aren’t quite Paradise Lost—who come from Yorkshire—but the history is steeped into everything around us. I’m only an hour away from the mountains, and on a clear day in Chester, you can look right across the border and see the ancient hillforts lining the Welsh hills. You can’t help but draw inspiration from the standing stones, the hillforts, and the deep history of the landscape. It definitely affects you and bleeds into the atmosphere of the music.

Dual Basses & The UK Scene

HHs: How does the songwriting work between the two of you? Do you write the bass lines simultaneously?

La Rainey: I’ll usually start noodling around with a very simple idea on my bass and write a vocal melody that follows the notes. I’ll take it to Murky first to see what he thinks. From there, we’ll expand the sound. Because I play standard tuning and Murky tunes down to something heavy like B-flat, our two basses naturally occupy different sonic spaces, which creates a really distinct, thick sound without needing a traditional guitar.

Once we have the skeleton of the song, we send it to our new drummer, Toby, who joined us at the end of last year, to see what he wants to do with the rhythm. We take it into practice, fine-tune it, and if we’re excited, we throw it straight into our live set to get it ready for the studio. I’ve set a personal goal to write at least one song a month this year, and I’ve already got several on the go, so the process is moving quite naturally.

HHs: How would you describe the current UK doom and heavy underground scene? Are there any particular bands you feel a kinship with?

La Rainey: It’s an interesting scene. A reviewer once described us as “doom pop,” which made me laugh because I don’t really know how to classify us! Murky loves heavy grindcore stuff, and I lean toward bluesy rock, but doom is where our tastes meet. We prefer clean, melodic singing rather than shouting.

There are so many fantastic, diverse bands under the doom umbrella right now. The ones we booked for the last festival, like Cruel Mother and Sleeping Mountain, are completely different from one another. Cruel Mother plays this incredible, dark doom-folk, while Sleeping Mountain has a bluesy but incredibly heavy vibe. There is so much talent coming out of places like Glasgow and Cardiff right now.

HHs: Who are your personal musical idols—the artists you always find yourself returning to?

La Rainey: Going back to my teenage years, it was always the classics: Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Janis Joplin, and old blues. Over time, my tastes just got heavier.

As for modern bands, I think Darkher is absolutely magnificent. I also loved SubRosa—we saw them a few times and I was sad when they split up, but they are playing a festival again this year, which gives me absolute goosebumps. Amenra is another one; seeing them live is just immense, you completely lose yourself for an hour and a half. I know their style of performing—where the singer often turns his back to the audience to stay fully immersed in the music—can be polarizing, but I love that level of dedication to the atmosphere. Even outside of heavy music, I appreciate anything with a great rhythm and beat, whether it’s 80s stuff like Duran Duran or even the Bee Gees!

What’s next on the horizon?

HHs: What is next on the horizon for Warlockhunt?

La Rainey: The main goal is to get another album together. We’ve been self-releasing everything so far, but we might try shopping the next one around to some record labels to see if there’s any interest. We also might splash out and book a residential studio where we can stay over for a few days to try a different recording environment.

Performance-wise, we’d love to play in mainland Europe. Our friends in the band Lusca are based in Vienna and are putting on a festival later this year, so we’re hoping to head over for that. We’ve also just released a limited vinyl with them that is pretty special: Each band has done a PJ Harvey cover, as we all admire her. She rocks!

We also have a few UK summer and autumn gigs lined up. And the guys from Old Horn Tooth, who headlined Saturday night at North West Doom Fest in April, stayed at our house for the afterparty, and we talked about putting together a killer line-up in London with Warlockhunt, Sabbat Wolf, and Cruel Mother. If that comes together, it’s going to be an incredible show!