On April 7, Jacob Bannon unveiled his long-awaited Wear Your Wounds album WYW. A 10-track journey through the varying shades of darkness and vulnerability that make up the Converge frontman’s psyche, played through the hands of his artistic partners in Trap Them, Twitching Tongues and The Red Chord. Taking influence from the likes of Neurosis, Swans and Pink Floyd, it really felt like a one-off record, something we’d never seen before and will never see again.
Well, that’s what we thought any way.
Earlier this week, Jacob Bannon revealed that not only was a second Wear Your Wounds album on the cards, he’s actually finished it and it will be available from May 19. Titled Dunedevil, it was written and recorded by Jake over seven days in a remote location in the dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts, without electricity of running water.
“I brought a little solar power set-up so I could record music,” Jacob tells Hammer. “I wrote seven songs and made abstract art for a week.”
Accompanying the record, is a 300-page book that Jacob also created while locked away, complete with original art, photographs and diary entries, which will have a corresponding art show to go along with it.
Even though the first Wear Your Wounds album came from the heart and soul of Bannon, it was recorded with a full band. Why is this record not just a solo album?
“I’m using the Wear Your Wounds title for anything that’s derived by me, that’s the way it makes most sense,” says Jacob. “I tracked all of it there, then Mike (McKenzie, The Red Chord) played guitar on the last song with me on it when I got home.”
It might feel like Jacob is rushing music, especially when you consider that the first Wear Your Wounds album took 15 years to finally see the light of day. But as Jake states, the idea of creating art and not letting anyone see it is a bizarre concept, if you have these waves of creativity surging through your veins and fingertips then why would you just sit on it?
“I’ve had a lot of things going on in my life in the past couple of years that have made me realise that time is not infinite. The songs that you create, the art that you create, needs to go to the public if that is the intention.
“When I kept writing songs and filing them away and not sharing them with people, that was doing me a disservice creatively, so I’m now at a point in my life where I just want to get it out to people. I don’t really care about schedules, I’m just doing it.”
Of course Jake is in a privileged position when it comes to release schedules as the owner of iconic heavy music label Deathwish Records. But in a weird twist, he’s self-releasing the record because he felt like making it and he paid for it to happen.
“I just want to get stuff out there and give it to people. I didn’t go out there with the intention to make a book, I went there with the intention to make stuff, but I like what I did so I’m going to share it with people.
“If it’s not out there in the world and you want to see it, build it.”
Words to live by.
