Bask announce heavy psychedelic album ‘The Turning’

Ever since they came rumbling down from the Blue Ridge Mountains, it was clear that Bask are cut from a different neck of the woods than their fellow Southern trailblazers.

“It’s really exactly what you want from a musical artist”, Heavy Blog is Heavy wrote about the band’s previous album, “a group of people creating their own sound that isn’t aping anyone”.

The climb to reach album number four wound up taking the Asheville natives on one hell of a trip. But The Turning takes Bask’s homebrewed Heavy Americana to a new dimension. While its lead single starts with boots firmly planted in familiar metallic pastures, “Dig My Heels” leaps into the great beyond thanks to a gentle nudge from the band’s newest member.

“We’ve been through so many trials and tribulations together over the past five years”, Bask says. “We were knocked down by COVID, then by Hurricane Helene. Seeing this album finally come to light is therapeutic for us. The Turning is Bask at our finest. It’s our most cohesive and heartfelt effort, an ode to our mountain home in the sky”.

To kick off this heavy and heady new frontier, Bask are touring the East Coast later this summer. Hear them play “Dig My Heels” and other songs from The Turning during the album’s opening run out on the road.

The Turning 2025 East Coast Tour 
August 20 – Atlanta, GA @ 529
August 21 – Savannah, GA @ El Rocko
August 22 – Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel
August 23 – Raleigh, NC @ Chapel of Bones
August 24 – Richmond, VA @ Fuzzy Cactus
August 26 – Philadephia, PA @ MilkBoy
August 28 – Searsport, ME @ Starboard Lounge
August 29 – Providence, RI @ Parlour
August 30 – Wallingford, CT @ Cherry Street Station
August 31 – Boston, MA @ O’Briens

For as long as they’ve been together, Bask have called The Land of the Sky home. “We’ve been a band longer than we’ve been with our spouses”, says bassist Jesse Van Note. The Turning is still rooted in Appalachia’s rugged terrain. The album was recorded at Echo Mountain Recording with producer and fellow Asheville fixture Kenny Harrington, who’s also worked alongside Manchester Orchestra. “Dig My Heels” quickly settles into a sunbaked groove with riffs that are as chiseled as red clay. But once drummer Scott Middleton takes the reins, the band’s new single bounds off in a proggier direction.

“This song stemmed from Scott calling me out”, laughs guitarist Ray Worth. Instead of following Worth‘s headbanging leads, the band let Middleton‘s sideways gallop be their guide. “There’s nothing wrong with playing in 4/4”, Middleton acknowledges, “but if you’re not exploring, then you’re missing out on a world of opportunity”. As “Dig My Heals” rounds the corner into the chorus, what should appear but a country field of paisley countermelodies.

“We all like heavy music and half us grew up around folk and bluegrass”, says vocalist and co-guitarist Zeb Wright, “but The Turning leans into that mix even further”.

Despite the global pandemic and a natural disaster hitting their hometown, Bask have grown by literal leaps and conceptual bounds on The Turning. While they’ve have always been a tight-knit group, this is the band’s first album to welcome Jed Willis as an official member. Granted, Willis was already part of their orbit, having put a bow on their last album and chipped in on tour with merch and driving duties. But while a light touch, his reassuring presence launches “Dig My Heels” into the stratosphere. Floating amidst a constellation of twinkling chimes and keys that fall like stardust, his pedal steel softly swirls with all the colors of the Milky Way.

“That part just sort of flowed out of me”, Wright says about the single’s mesmerizing middle section. “It was when we were working on ‘Dig My Heels’ that I first asked Jed to lay some steel down on this record. But after hearing how he opened up a new dimension within this song, I felt like we could have him play all over The Turning. The songs were twangy but also spacier and more psychedelic than anything we’ve done before”.     

“These guys have become friends and brothers to me over the past decade or so”, says Willis. “Our music journeys have become intertwined, creating a solid and welcoming foundation that made my transition into the band feel like a natural next step for all of us”.  

Adding a headier dose of heaviness also influenced the concept behind The Turning. The album’s story arc truly straddles the fence between cosmic and country with a 40-minute saga that spans not only genres but generations in man’s never-ending quest for immortality. “Dig My Heels” marks its first major turning point. “When you’re riding with death / no one’s following“, remarks its mysteriously ageless gunslinger before riding off into the intergalactic void with our spurred heroine in hot pursuit. But despite being admittedly “out there”, the album’s dwellings on family, aging, death and rebirth hit close to home. Cosmic scale tipped by Van Note‘s heaving bass line, the song ends by crashing down with all the supernatural force of a waterfall on Mars.

“The Turning was a challenge”, the band says, “but we weathered the storm and came out the other side with a beautiful album that sounds like Bask”.  

Psychedelic rockers have wrangled with the laws of spacetime since time immemorial, but for Bask, the past half decade has felt like falling through a prolonged series of black holes.

Before the pandemic knocked 2020 for a loop, the band were all set to traverse North America’s dusty ol’ trail with kindred spirits Elder. Flash forward roughly four years and they were fixing to tour Europe when another disaster struck their idyllic mountain town. The climb to reach album number four wound up taking one hell of a trip. But on The Turning, Bask bring Heavy Americana to a whole new dimension.    

“The past five years have been challenging for all of us”, the band says. “So seeing this album finally come to light is therapeutic. The Turning is Bask at our finest. It’s our most cohesive and heartfelt effort, an ode to our mountain home in the sky”.  

For as long as they’ve been together, Bask have called Asheville, North Carolina home.  Drummer Scott Middleton and axeman Ray Worth were already jamming up a storm, when in 2013, they tag teamed with bassist Jesse Van Note and vocalist/guitarist Zeb Wright after the two arrived in The Land of the Sky. “We’ve been a band longer than we’ve been with our spouses”, Van Note acknowledges with a gold-toothed smile of appreciation. And yet, after 12 years in the same city, Bask still sound of their own time and place. Sharing bills with High on Fire, Black Tusk and Weedeater has led some metal archivists to peg them as stoners, though it was clear right away that these trailblazers were carved from a different neck of the woods.  

“I’m quite sure I haven’t heard anything like it”, Metal Storm admired after filling up on Bask‘s first full-length American Hollow. Second helping Ramble Beyond expanded the band’s homebrewed heaviness into crushing peaks and leaf-strewn valleys. “It’s tuneful, heavy, full of heart and soul and wanderlust” noted Invisible Oranges before adding, “and above all, a killer fucking rock album”.  

“It’s really exactly what you want from a musical artist: a group of people creating their own sound that isn’t aping anyone”, Heavy Blog is Heavy sang in praise of the aptly titled III, which took a more snow-sheened path at the direction of Matt Bayles, who’s served as studio sherpa for Pearl Jam, Mastodon and Minus the Bear. “This is the kind of band you want to see grow”.  

Bask continue to grow by literal leaps and conceptual bounds on The Turning. “I think that’s where the magic is for us”, Van Note muses. “We’re not put in a box”. Following a retreat to Echo Mountain Recording with producer Kenny Harrington, the band have returned with a concept album that truly straddles the fence between cosmic and country. “Zeb did a lot of work behind the scenes to help Kenny bridge the gap between the polish of our last record and the warmth of Ramble Beyond”. In the spirit of a Hollywood Western, the opening track sets a sizzling scene. Distant cries of trumpet stir beneath ominous drone, as if blown with the wind through a mountain chasm. Only then, like a lone ranger, does “In The Heat of the Dying Sun” appear over the blood moon horizon. “I was born to ride”, announces Wright with booming cleans as bass circles the wagons with the earthshaking force of an asteroid.  

The Turning remains grounded in the natural-born sounds of Appalachia, which pokes its prickly head through the sludgier chords of “The Cloth” like a black bear swimming upstream. “We all like heavy music and half of us grew up around folk and bluegrass”, explains Wright, “but this album leans into that mix even further”. Despite starting with boots firmly planted in Tampa Bay death metal, lead single “Dig My Heels” strides through kudzu-covered fields of prog before bounding for the great beyond. “Scott called me out”, Worth laughs when asked about the song’s origins. “Instead of writing to my riffs like we’re known to do, his drumbeat took the reins on this one”.  

“There’s nothing wrong with playing in 4/4”, Middleton admits, “but if you’re not exploring, then you’re missing out on a world of opportunity”.  

While they’ve always been a tight-knit group, Bask‘s immediate universe has also expanded. Granted, Jed Willis was already part of the band’s orbit, having helped put a bow on their last album. He’s also chipped in on tour with merch and driving duties, but The Turning welcomes him as an official member. “It’s hard trying to add someone when you’ve had the same four guys in a van for 12 years”, notes Van Note. Indeed, it’s a testament to their dyed-in-the-wool chemistry that the album’s initial thread was teased out in one go. Chugging riffs lock horns with a sideways galloping before folding seamlessly into pastoral space rock, though “Unwound” didn’t fully come together until laced with Willis‘ aching bends of pedal steel. “He’s done a really good job of shining when we want that sound”.        

“These guys have become friends and brothers to me over the past decade or so”, Willis says. “We’ve shared rehearsal spaces, explored new sounds and collaborated on various side projects. Our music journeys have become intertwined, creating a solid and welcoming foundation that made my transition into the band feel like a natural next step for all of us”.  

“When we started writing The Turning, the songs were twangy but also spacier and more psychedelic than anything we’ve done before”, adds Wright, who also performs as the band’s lyrical scribe. “And so I asked myself, ‘What does this feel like? What do all these things come together and make?”  

The answer? How about a 40 odd minute, sci-fi opus that stretches not just across dimensions but generations in man’s never-ending quest for immortality. “Sorry, this is gonna get a bit heavy”, Wright warns before walking us through the ins-and-outs of Bask‘s latest yarn. Whereas the band’s previous treks were inspired by tall tales, The Turning spools forth from their own fantastical imagination. The album’s spurred heroine, known simply as The Rider, has her extraterrestrial world turned upside down by “The Traveler”, a mysteriously ageless gunslinger who needs her help getting out of Dodge. “Don’t be frightened of me”, he pleads, though the breakdown’s doomy, organ-provoked premonition suggests his intentions aren’t so honorable. Maze-like twists are revealed at every self-referential turns as the star-crossed outlaws try and outrun the changing of the seasons. However, despite being admittedly “out there”, the album’s dwellings on family, aging, death and rebirth hit close to home.  

“We’ve been through so much together. We were robbed in Sweden. A tire literally fell off our van while we were driving”, Van Note reflects. “Because of COVID, we didn’t get together as much, either. We’re also older now and there are challenges and responsibilities that come with that. I have two kids. Some of us have bought houses. We’ve all been through marriages and different relationships. For things to snowball on top of the band one after another, it kind of had us feeling like maybe this was the end of our era”.  

In fact, The Turning was almost lost to the sands of time. Bask finished tracking just a few weeks before Hurricane Helene reached Asheville. “It was terrifying”, Worth remembers. “We had a hard time getting in touch with each other. I climbed a hill to get cell phone reception. One of the guys was still unaccounted for the day before we were supposed to leave for Europe”. While they feel fortunate to have sustained just a flooded practice space, the storm’s aftermath did seep into the album’s mixing and mastering sessions with Alan Douches. “It would be naive to think that a life-changing event didn’t color the overall tone”. With a wearisome gait, “Long Lost Light” drifts through a ghost town haunted by salooning piano and high, lonesome fiddle until it’s swept like sawdust into the void.  

“It’s the heaviest and most challenging song”, Wright says about the album’s emotional centerpiece. Though not the last song written for The Turning, it became the missing piece almost by design. “We worried it was going to be too hard for us to listen back to”, Van Note shares, a sentiment that Worth echoes. “You can feel the pain in every note”. But fellow Asheville native Franklin Keel helped them turn the tide with his deeply melancholic churns of cello. “The way Franklin bends the note, right as things get heavy”, Van Note points out, ” it acted like a release for us”.  

When pressed, Wright stops short of concluding that The Turning has a happy ending.   “Honestly, it’s almost in spite of that”, he responds in reference to the surprise family reunion that sets its final showdown in motion. If we’re left with a cliffhanger, then the myriad ways in which the albums keeps us guessing are perhaps fitting. After all, much like their hometown, the band are just starting to feel as if things are turning around. “Cleaning up our practice space was such an emotional experience. It was heart-wrenching but also heartwarming at the same time. It led us to re-appreciate each other and our community”. Just as our heroine discovers her hidden powers, the title track ends with the newly mounted five-piece stampeding toward the next frontier. “I danced through age and fire”, Wright belts, backed by everything Bask have always stood for: mountainous bass, tumbling drums, blazing leads, and a sunburst of pedal steel.  

“Music is an emotional outlet, but at the end of the day, it’s also a way for us to hang out with our best buds”, the band says. “The Turning was a challenge, but we weathered the storm and came out the other side with a beautiful album that sounds like Bask”.   

Line-up:
Jesse Van Note – Bass
Scott Middleton – Drums
Ray Worth – Guitar
Zeb Wright – Guitar/Vocals
Jed Willis – Pedal Steel

Guest musicians
Clay White – Trumpet
Franklin Keel – Cello
Alex Taub – Piano, Hammond B3 Organ