Seattle, Washington; home to rain, grunge rock, rain, the Space Needle and more rain. It is also home to Wormwood; and eclectic blend of doom metal, noise and hints of metalcore. After numerous regional tours and shows opening for bands such as Mastodon, Wormwood are currently in the midst of recording their first new album in five years.

Lara: Wormwood's lyrics tend to orient around dark and difficult themes, typically expressed from a psychological perspective rather than as a direct call to action. Paradoxes of conscience and integrity within the context of society; challenges put forth by independent thought and free will; the relationship between mankind and nature: these concepts play large roles as lyrical inspiration. Humans are dually capable of great cruelty and great compassion, grand strides of enlightenment and terrible acts of selfishness and malice. I like to think that Wormwood's lyrics articulate the grey areas of human experience.

Our music style reflects these heavy, depressive conceptual sentiments. We like being creative with beats and riffs - we try to incorporate both slow and up-tempo parts as well as irregular counts; we include distortion, samples and dissonance to enhance walls of sound, but we also use quiet instrumentation breaks and even silence. When we're writing a song, we may consciously strive to retain a particular atmosphere, but at the same time we hope to avoid predictability. Our melodies are mainly buried in the low-end, played by two bass guitars; we incorporate both orchestral and piano keyboards and noise harmonics; drums are the backbone of just about every riff.

Lara: Wormwood started out in Lawrence, Kansas, back in 1997. We played lots of early shows with Coalesce and The Esoteric; we're old friends. For Requiescat, Sean traded guest vocal spots with Larry, who appears on Coalesce's 0:12 Revolution in Just Listening.

Mikey from Legion Records had been working with Burn the Priest (now Lamb of God), and he knew Steve Austin through those guys. So when Legion put out the Wormwood CD, Mikey had Steve do the mastering.

Lara: The cover to the CD is from a 16th Century woodcut that depicts a newly departed soul being guided from the physical body into the afterlife. It seemed to fit perfectly as an illustration of a "requiescat", which is a ritual prayer for the peaceful repose of the newly dead.

The doorway collage on the LP cover is another allusion to the transcendent implication to the album title. The booklet artwork comprises collage pieces that are intended to relate to each song.

Lara: We will be recording totally new material as well as re-recording the songs that have appeared on split 7-inch tracks. We are very excited that we will be working with Billy Anderson on this album! We really feel like our style of music can be brought into the best light under his direction in the studio. Also, this will be our first time recording with drummer Pete Jay, and we're totally stoked about that, too.

Our expectations for ourselves in the studio are pretty high, but so is our excitement level about the recording in general. Ultimately, that should be a good combination.

Lara: There are no plans right now to use the old recordings of those tracks on any further releases. The songs themselves, some of which have been changed since they were first released, will be re-recorded as part of the studio sessions for the new album.

Lara: The vinyl version of the new album will be released through Kreation Records; we're open to outside interests in the CD release, as putting out the CD will be an immediate goal once the recording is finished. There are also plans in the works to re-release the Behemoth 3-sided 7" in association with Kreation Records. That would happen shortly after the release of the album.

Once the album is completed, our primary goal will be to write new music. Even though we're all looking forward to recording, the fact is, this album has been five years in the making. Each of us is anxious to finally get back into the creative mode. It will be nice to put the older songs on the backburner and start working from a blank slate again.