Will Haven’s newest album, VII, out July 7 via Minus Head Records, sees the Sacramento based band dialing in on their blend of heavy riffs and spacey overtones. Known for their sludgy take on hardcore, the group has been adding touches of keyboards and effect-laden guitar atmospheres to their sound throughout the years, constantly evolving while still remaining true to the identity they developed on their earlier fan favorites like Carpe Diem and El Diablo. VII continues that trajectory, pushing Will Haven forward sonically, challenging both the listener and the band with extra dimensions and layers of sound.
Jeff Irwin, guitarist and founding member of the band, took the time to share with us his thoughts on the creation of the album, the desire for experimentation, and how the band has remained consistent throughout their nearly three decade career.
When did writing begin for VII?
We came off tour in 2019; we did a little stint in Europe and we came home and we had a band meeting or whatever, and at that meeting, we were just like, “All right, what are we going to do next?” and I was like, “I have some ideas already kind of recorded”. I showed the guys like, “Here’s some stuff; do you want to work on this maybe for a new Will Haven Record?” and everybody said, “Yes, let’s do it.” We started writing in ’19 hoping that we would get into the studio and maybe get something out in 2020, and then, you know, the whole world went to shit. So then after the whole COVID thing, I just continued to write at home and just worked on the ideas even more.
Then, I think it was a few months into COVID, I was like, you know what, let’s just go record some stuff. We don’t have to do the whole record, but let’s record some songs here and there. My friend owns a studio down near where I live; I asked, “Are you going to have people in your studio?” and he was like, “Yeah, I’m open.” So we went down there and recorded these songs; I took it home, worked on them, and just kind of pieced stuff together slowly. When we realized there was going to be no concerts, no shows, nothing going on for quite a while, I just took the time myself to just work on the songs and mess with them and have fun with them, really. I have a little home studio that I can screw around with.
So it started in ’19, and it was just a slow process all through COVID, and then once we saw COVID start lifting, it was like, “OK, now let’s finish the record and then try to get this out. We didn’t have an exact time for it to come out; just let’s get it out as soon as we can. And then after all the stuff starts to fall in place, it ended up being this year. It was quite a process, but it was more because of COVID than it was us just being lazy.
Were those original ideas written while on that touring cycle?
No, I worked on some stuff—It was guys from Will Haven: me, Mitch (Wheeler, drums), and our bass player Adrien (Contreras)—We had screwed around years ago just working on riffs. But it was more like death metal riffs. We were just having fun and just kind of screwing around, and we had this compilation of all these riffs. We just put it in one song, but it wasn’t really a song; it was just riff after riff after riff. So I had stumbled upon those old demos that we had done with just the three of us, and when I pulled those out, I was like, “This would be kind of cool to morph into a Will Haven record” because it was a little different than what we had just done with Muerte, and I’m a big fan of riffs, and we haven’t really done more of the riff kind of stuff since, I would say Carpe Diem.
So I was excited, like, let’s try something new; we’ll write some death metal riffs and some hardcore riffs; let’s just make it more of a riff record. But we didn’t want to make it a standard song-record either; we wanted to be all over the place. That was the thing going into it. Let’s make a riff record, but let’s not make it a song, per say. Let’s just make it an eclectic mix of everything. We just wanted to make something different from Muerte; that was kind of our game plan. I used some of the riffs that we had done, but a lot of it was reworked into those riffs and made into a song, or whatever we were making.
Did having all that time to work on it through COVID inform the experimental and diverse sound you’re talking about?
I would say that the original idea was even crazier than what came out. I think COVID probably smoothed it out because I think if we had wrote those songs the way we intended and then not had the three years to work on them, I think this record would have been probably a little too chaotic for people. Initially these songs were all over the place. Our vision was Pantera meets Mr Bungle, basically, so I don’t even know if our fans would even like it. To me it was fun, but when COVID came, and I was able to take them home and listen to them, it was a little too much, so I was able to smooth them out. I still keep the vibe, but I added more mellow stuff.
I think it was just a big work in progress, but having those three years to stay home and do nothing, I was able to go back and make them at least more listenable and a little more enjoyable than not knowing what the hell is going on. It was a pretty shitty time, but for me it was probably a blessing that it gave me time to go back and listen to the record and work on songs and make it more cohesive than our original plans. My game plan was just to make it all over the place; make it really heavy, but make it mellow. That’s kind of the Will Haven way. I say Will Haven is like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup; we’re salty and sweet.
VII has all these extra atmospheres and layers and textures; is that a continuation of what you did on Muerte with the keyboards?
What’s weird is that the only keyboard stuff we really did was on some of the ambient stuff in-between songs and a couple things here and there, but Muerte has way more keyboards than this record did. We used a lot of guitar effects on this record, so a lot of it is guitar based, which is funny because it does sound a little keyboard–ish but it’s actually guitars, which is cool.
For me, the keyboard is basically to add a tiny bit of atmosphere. I don’t want a lot of keyboards; I don’t want it to be standing out. I just want it to be just in the mix to give it a more ambient vibe because sometimes guitars don’t fill that bottom end and make it full. That’s the only reason we used keyboards, was to make it a more ambient, fuller sound. But yeah, we ended up not using keyboards as much as I thought we would on this record. So when we do play it live, it does sound the way it does on the record, which is cool.
That’s interesting because it has a lot of weird, spacey tones. How were you creating that on guitar?
We had three years to work on this thing, and I probably went through three different guitar rigs on this record. I had an Eventide Space pedal I was using, and then I mixed in some other pedals, and then Stephan (Carpenter) from Deftones talked me into getting a Line 6 Helix to take on the road with me—an amp modulator—and me and Sean, my friend, started screwing with that thing, and with that thing you can make any kind of sound you want, basically. So we were screwing around with that, making crazy ambient sounds with patches and stuff. It was just a lot of stuff we fused and mixed together.
There is keyboard on some things, but I remember it not being as prominent as it was on Muerte or even Voir Dire. We used a lot of keyboard on Voir Dire, but this one, we scaled back a little bit, but it’s cool that it has that sound but we didn’t use it as much. Sean (Bivins), who’s our touring guitar player and plays keyboard on some of the stuff, when we play the new stuff, he doesn’t play keyboard at all; he plays second guitar, and it sounds just like the record. Somehow it worked out that we could keep the ambiance and not sacrifice playing guitar.
Do you find the desire to experiment more as time goes on with this band?
Yeah, I was talking to somebody the other day, and I was like, “I don’t even know what band we want to be.” I think we’re still trying to figure it out, and you can see our progression from each record. I think my formula is definitely that I love heavy music, and I love just kicking people in the face. I mean, I think we’re a live band; we’ve always been a live band, so when I go to write a song I want to be able to kick ass live and be in people’s face. But I do like the soothing moments, too, where it’s like you get a barrage of metal, but then here’s a cool, sweet little mellow part, too. Like I said, I like salty sweet. You get some real raw stuff and you get some really nice mellow stuff and it’s a good juxtaposition. I love music like that where it’s really heavy, and then it’s really soft, and then it gets heavy again, but it has to be dark. I don’t like when it’s really pretty; you still have to keep a dark ambient vibe to it.
I guess it’s my influences; I have a million influences, not just metal and ambient stuff. I like hip hop and I like Radiohead and Cannibal Corpse, and I don’t prefer one band over the other. So it’s just me loving all this different stuff of music and putting it into the Will Haven blender, and what comes out comes out, but my main goal is that it has to be emotional. I have to feel it. When we’re playing live, I have to feel it for it to stick.
You guys have created a distinct, identifiable sound, though. How do you manage to stay consistent while still experimenting?
I think it just naturally comes out of me. I’m pretty much the original member. I started it, and I’ve written 90% of the music, so I think when you hear Will Haven, it’s basically an extension of me, and those guys like Grady and Mitch and everybody else are complementary, adding their piece to it. But luckily, we’re all really close, and we’re all best friends, so we’re all on the same vibe anyway. I’ve known Grady since 5th grade; I’ve known Mitch for almost 30 years; these guys are like my brothers. So I when I present them something, it’s not weird; it’s not foreign to them; they just know exactly what to do over it. I don’t have to say, “Mitch, do this,” or, “Grady, do this.” They just naturally know what to do.
I think it’s a combination of me just being the key guy in Will Haven. That’s my sound; that’s my guitar playing; that’s my song writing, so it’s always been consistent because that’s just what I know, and those guys will add their flavor over it. It just makes it Will Haven. I think that’s the reason for the consistency. If you take a key member out of a band—if you take Stephan out of Deftones, I don’t know that it will sound like Deftones anymore because Stephan’s the songwriter. So it’s one of those things, it’s just in our DNA, and even if I tried to write something different, it would still sound like Will Haven. I’ve done a couple side bands for fun, and they sound like Will Haven. It comes out of me; it’s just my DNA.
Has the writing process for you changed over the years?
No, we’re pretty old school. I write stuff at home, and then I bring it to practice and then we jam on it, and then everybody has their sense of direction where they want it to go or what they like, what sounds good. But I basically come up with the bulk of it, and then we rearrange it and add stuff, and what’s really cool about Mitch is that he’s one of those drummers where I could say, try a crazy beat or something, and he’ll do it on the first take, and then I’ll play something over it to bridge him into the next part, and it just works. It just totally fits. So I’m lucky to have band members that I don’t have to worry about the songs. I kind of know how the song is going to go when I bring it to them, which is kind of nice, but we get together and we just jam.
We do it old school. We don’t send mp3s to each other or whatever. We don’t do that at all. We’re in the room working together and practicing. Then, once we get an idea, I’ll go home and rework it. These last few records, we would go into the studio or the practice space and be working on a song, and then I’d take it home, and I’d dissect it and take it back totally different (laughs). They would get frustrated with me, but it’s all for the better. The song writing process probably gets to them, but it works out; we all put our two cents in.
I saw you say something about writing live in real time. Is that what you meant?
Yeah, that’s what we do. We don’t do mp3s; I don’t send a riff to Mitch, and he records drums at home. Everything we do is live. We actually track live, and while we’re practicing, we track live, too. We just set up some mics in the room, and we just jam live. When we recorded pretty much every Will Haven record, we record the base of it live and, of course, we do our overdubs and stuff, fix things here and there, but for the most part, it’s us playing live, so it’s really important for us to capture the emotion of everything.
Will Haven is based on emotion. We’re not technical guitar players; we’re not like Slipknot where those guys are technical players, and everyone’s a badass. We’re not that good, so our music has to be based on emotion and the raw feeling that comes out of our hands, and that’s what we want to get across. It’s important for us to keep that, where it’s natural and organic.
While there’s been a shift in general to a more technical style, you guys have kept that raw intensity. Is that more ’90’s groove-centric sound Will Haven’s base?
Absolutely. We grew up on Sepultura and Pantera and all these bands. They were groove-based bands—the riff and the groove. We grew up in the nu-metal era where you had a heavy guitar riff, and you had a hip hop beat over it. No matter if it was Sepultura or whatever, that just kind of morphed itself into our music. I’m a huge fan of hip hop. I love hip hop because of the beats, so that just naturally is going to come into writing music. That’s what we grew up on, that’s what we know.
I’ve heard people call us nu-metal, and I’m like, yeah, I guess. Technically, I guess we could be, since we are groove based. But to me, that’s what moves me. The technical stuff, it’s awesome to watch. Those musicians are amazing, but I’m not sitting there nodding my head off my neck like when I saw Pantera or Sepultura. My neck was going to fall off my shoulders I was banging my head so hard. With the new stuff, I’m not banging my head; I’m just watching in awe, but I don’t feel it. To me, that’s important, that I have to feel it. I want people to go to a Will Haven show, and I want to see them headbanging for an hour. I don’t want them standing there going, “Oh, these guys are good.” “I can’t resist not banging my head,” that’s what I want.
I don’t know if people thought the groove-based thing was nu metal and were like, “No, don’t do that; that’s nu-metal.” Will Haven’s been around since ’95, so we’ve seen every kind of metal thing you could see, from the groove to the djent to whatever; we’ve lived through it all. It got to a point where maybe people thought nu-metal wasn’t cool anymore, so (they thought), don’t do the more groove-based thing; you have to be more technical. So maybe that was the new thing, which I get it.
To me, there is a sense, like some of the djent stuff just doesn’t have the emotion or the raw power that some of the old stuff like Roots, or I keep going to Pantera—bands like that, where you just feel it. Those riffs aren’t hard to play, but there’s something very impactful about how heavy it was. Djent bands, the emotion isn’t there. They’re heavy; they’re technical, but the emotion, I just don’t feel it. That seems to be lost a little bit. Meshuggah, they still pull it off, I can still feel something when they play, but there’s only one Meshuggah. Code Orange came out and started trying to bring that back a little bit. They kind of went off and did their own thing, but their first couple records I felt like they were getting that groove base, kind of bringing that back a little bit. I was happy to see bands bringing that back, but people are still fighting it a little bit. Maybe a lot of drummers now, they haven’t grown up with that so they don’t know how to rock that beat. Maybe all they know is watching Joey Jordison their whole life, and that’s all they know. Yeah, we’re old so that’s just all we know.
It’s interesting you mention bands like that because Will Haven sort of transcended the hardcore scene. You’ve played with Earth Crisis and Converge, but then you’ve also gone and toured with Deftones and Slipknot, too.
Yeah, I was talking with someone the other day, and he grew up in Southern California when we played with Earth Crisis and Snapcase down in LA, and he was asking if we felt like we fit in, and I was like, “No, not really.” We were friends with those bands—good friends—but musically, we never fit with those bands, and I always felt like the outsider when we played those hardcore straight edge shows. Then, we weren’t really groove metal, we were more Neurosis; a little bit of Quicksand influence, a little Snapcase in there, but more Neurosis. I felt like we were always kind of an outsider.
Even the Deftones tour—I thought we matched ok musically, but I felt we were a little heavier for Deftones fans. I mean, it worked great; the reception was awesome, but stuff like that, I felt like I needed my brothers, but I still felt out of place on the tour a little bit. I don’t think we ever felt like we fit. When we toured with Slipknot, I was like, those fans are going to hate us because we’re not Slipknot; we’re not that technical; we’re just more kind of droney and in-your-face, but the reception was well.
Even the times I felt really out of place, we still did well, but I think that’s because we connect emotionally. I think people feel our music, and instead of just watching us they actually feel it. It may take them a few songs to get it but by the end of the set they’re just rocking out. We kind of lull them into this trance of, “Oh shit, I can’t stop banging my head.” I don’t think we’ve ever really fit in with anybody; we’ve kind of just been our own thing.
Because of all these different audiences, do you see Will Haven a widespread and varying fan base?
Yeah, because we grew up in so many different scenes. We grew up in the hardcore scene, so we do have some of the old hardcore heads that still like us. Of course the Deftones tour brought us a whole new fanbase, so we got a lot of Deftones fans that are Will Haven fans, which is awesome. I love Deftones’ fans. They’re good fans because they appreciate good music, so I don’t mind having that fanbase at all. We do have some Slipknot fans that won over on that tour.
It is pretty eclectic; it is all over the place, but it seems like Will Haven is a very cult-driven band. To me, we’re still very underground, but it’s cool. If you like Will Haven, I think you‘re considered somewhat cool, if you’ve heard of us or seen us live. I like that because there’s bands that I love that are like that, but I think there’s people, especially hardcore Will Haven fans, that feel like they own a piece of us. They really take what we do to heart, and they’ll give it to us if we don’t bring it.
Knowing the fan base and being able to trace the trajectory of the band, is there a more deliberate nature now in how you approach writing new material?
When you’re in a band that has a little bit of a fanbase, no matter how big or small that you are, you always worry about the reception you may get from your fans, especially when you have hardcore fans that really love the band. You have to walk a fine line of, as a band, you want to do something new and experimental and different, but you don’t want to piss off your fans, either. I’m a fan of music, and I’ve had bands that I totally love that put out records and I’m like, “What did you do? Don’t do that.” And it’s a selfish thing for a fan to do.
We’ve been around for a long time, and we’ve been through all kinds of phases of every kind of genre you can think of, and we’re still kicking; we’re still going, and those fans have stuck with us, so we want to make them happy and make them proud to be a Will Haven fan and just continue to put out kickass records. But we also want to challenge ourselves too. I can play Carpe Diem in my sleep, so I want to write something that’s a little more challenging to me because it’s more fun. It’s a new growth for me as a songwriter. As a band, you want to challenge yourself, but you don’t want to stray too far from the path. I don’t think we have, but when I look back at the records, I feel each one is a little different from the last, which is cool, but I think it still sounds like Will Haven. That’s what we were talking about before. It’s just us; it’s me; it’s our DNA. It’s all we know, really.
Muerte was talked about as being the last Will Haven album, which obviously didn’t happen. What made you want to keep things going after that?
It was just more personal. People were going through a lot back when we were writing and finished Muerte, so it was like, do we have time to do this anymore? We were all kind of going through our own stuff in the world, and the band became a little too much, so we were like, let’s do one more record and walk off into the sunset. That record came out better than I thought it would. We had good expectations, but when it came out, it was actually a really good record, and we were really stoked on it. That was one thing, and then the reception for it was really good, and we did quite a but of touring, more than we had done in a while. We did West Coast shows, and we went to Europe a couple times; we did Download in Spain, which was awesome, and we did Hellfest in France that year, which was really big for us. Things just started getting better.
The years between Heirophant and Voir Dire were pretty quiet in the Will Haven world. A lot of people didn’t even know we put out a record, and we didn’t tour much; we didn’t do a lot of shows. We thought maybe Will Haven had run its course, and people aren’t as interested as they used to be in us, and that’s cool; we had a good run. With Muerte, things picked up a little more, and people heard us for the first time, or saw us for the first time, so it was like a rebirth of the band a little bit. I think when we came home from that European tour, we were all a little excited to have the new spark, and we’re all happy and all excited, and we’re all in a better place than we were before we started writing Meurte.
So we had a scenario of, let’s try to write a new one and see what happens, and luckily we did because I think this is the best the band has been mentally, and songwriting-wise, we’re having fun. But mentally, I think everyone is in a really good spot. Grady’s really happy; he loves being in the band again; he loves being with us. He left after Carpe Diem, and I didn’t know what his feelings were for the band for a long time, but now I think he appreciates everything we’ve done and loves the band again and is super excited to go out and tour. We kind of had a little rebirth, and we can go out and see if we can get a bigger fan base. That’s the thing that keeps us going, is if people are interested in the band. We love playing music, but we’ll play a local bar with our buddies if we wanted to, but to keep Will Haven going is pretty special. It’s up to the fans, if they care about anything we’re doing anymore.
So you do see a future beyond VII?
We’d love to keep this going as long as we can. I think we still have a lot of good music left in us; I think we’re still trying to find our footing of what we want to be, which is good because we’ll never be satisfied. Maybe we’ll try to get a little heavier; who knows? Now we’re just taking it day by day.
It’s always exciting when you put a record out because you do some interviews and some press, and you see the excitement in people, and that’s always exciting, and doing a couple shows and tours is really exciting. After a couple months, it wears off, and then people are moving onto the next thing. So for us, especially as an older band, it’s just trying to figure out how to keep that momentum going to where we can get a bigger fanbase and see where we can go with this, and then if the timing’s right and people are really excited about the band, then we’ll write another record. Or maybe we’ll just put out singles or something, but as far as the band, I don’t think we want to stop any time soon. I think we’re having fun and want to go as long as we possibly can, for sure.
I’m curious then about the album finishing on a song called “La Ultima Nota,” which also features a chord played by Will Haven fans.
When I was a kid, I was listening to the Beatles record Sgt. Peppers, and the very last song on there (“A Day In The Life”). I was listening with my uncle, and that piano chord came on, and my uncle had told me that tons of people played that one note, the Rolling Stones and all these people played that one note at the end of the record. I don’t know if it’s true or not; I never looked into it, but I always thought how cool it was that they got all their friends to play that one note. So I thought about doing the same thing with this record, having my musician friends play a last note—guys from Deftones and whoever. Just end the record on a fun thing to do. Then I thought it would be cooler if the fans do it instead of my friends, and have the fans be part of the record. If this is the last Will Haven record ever, the fans got to play the last note of the Will Haven record.
I just brainstormed and sent a thing on social media just saying, “Hey, if you want to play on the new Will Haven record, just hit a G-sharp note, and it could be on guitar, trombone, flute, whatever the hell you want, just play a G-sharp and email it to me.” I thought maybe I’d get a couple. I ended up getting 300 submissions, so I had to go and dump them into Garage Band, and then I had to piece it all together. I had to take everybody’s note and line it up perfectly, and then I just dumped that file and gave it to our engineer. The band played the note, but everything you hear is all fans. It sounds like one big guitar thing, but there’s banjo in there; there’s flute; there’s a piano; there’s so much crap in there. We cut out pretty early, so all the feedback you hear at the very end, that’s all fan stuff. It’s basically 300 Will Haven fans playing on the record, so anybody who did it knows they’re on the record, which is cool. So we called it “The Last Note.”
So it’s not a reference to the band ending?
It very well could be our last note. I thought, if it is, how cool would it be to have the fans play the last note instead of the band? Who knows? Hopefully we’ll put out new music. Either way, they’re on the record, which is cool, no matter what happens.
Is there one particular song that jumps out to you on VII?
I don’t know. It’s funny; I’ve listened to it at least a thousand times now. It’s probably the Will Haven record I have most listened to. To me, it was all in pieces and then we finally put it all together, so it was making more sense to me. I wrote the songs as songs, but to me, the songs aren’t normal songs, which is cool. I love that. To me, it’s a big journey, and there’s specific parts to the record that come up, and it’s all over the place, and not just one specific song, but there’s parts that come up, and I’m like, “I love that part; it’s so cool,” and then it will go away, and it doesn’t come back. But I like that. I think I just love the diversity of it and how it’s so up and down, and the whole thing sounds like one big song that weaves in and out, and it gets loud, and it gets quiet and jumps to a whole different part.
To me, it’s just very listenable. It’s a fun record to listen to. I love Carpe Diem because every song is a heavy hitter but this one is fun to listen to. It doesn’t get boring to me. That’s what I always wanted to make, a record that doesn’t get boring. I’m still getting used to it. It’s just a bunch of different parts that all jump out at me.
I’m also really pumped to see Grady’s lyrics and enjoying what he’s talking about because he has some really powerful stuff in there. It’s probably some of his best song writing that he’s done in a while. So yeah, I’m enjoying that too.
Photo courtesy Eric Rivera
