Helms Alee have just announced these shows in the UK and Ireland in September. They will be joining their friends TORCHE for a few and then headlining two shows in Birmingham and London. Don't miss out.
UK/IRELAND 2025
Sept 11 Bristol - Bristol Electric*+
Sept 12 Glasgow - Core. Festival*+
Sept 13 Dublin - Button Factory*
Sept 14 Manchester - New Century Hall*+
Sept 15 Birmingham - Dead Wax
Sept 16 London - New Cross Inn
*Supporting TORCHE
+ also with OMO opening
Helms Alee are joining Young Widows as the special guest on their 2025 US tour. Catch them as they head down the West Coast in late August. Tickets are on sale Monday, May 19 at 11am PT.
YOUNG WIDOWS & HELMS ALEE
8/22 Fri Seattle, WA Clockout lounge
8/23 Sat Bellingham, WA Structures Brewing
8/24 Sun Portland, OR Dante's
8/26 Tue San Francisco, CA Bottom Of The Hill
8/27 Wed Costa Mesa, CA The Wayfarer
8/28 Thu Los Angeles, CA Zebulon
8/29 Fri San Diego, CA Brick By Brick
Helms Alee have added another date to their Summer European Tour. They will be supporting Botch in Köln on June 14th. Tickets on sale March 30th at 10:00am (CEST): www.helmsalee.net
Full list:
June 8 - Mystic festival – Gdansk (PL)
June 9 - Blechschloss – Dresden (DE)
June 10 - Meet Factory – Prague (CZ)
June 11 - PMK – Innsbruck (AT)
June 12 – Ligera – Milan (IT)
June 13 – Sunset Bar Club – Martigny (CH)
June 14 - Essigfabrik - Köln (DE) (supporting Botch)
June 15 – Supersonic – Paris (FR)
June 16 – Hellfest – Clisson (FR)
June 17 – La Zone – Liege (BE)
June 18 – Patronaat - Haarlem (NL)
Helms Alee will be back to Europe in June 2023. Tickets on sale now: www.helmsalee.net
Full list:
June 8 - Mystic festival – Gdansk (PL)
June 9 - Blechschloss – Dresden (DE)
June 10 - Meet Factory – Prague (CZ)
June 11 - PMK – Innsbruck (AT)
June 12 – Ligera – Milan (IT)
June 13 – Sunset Bar Club – Martigny (CH)
June 15 – Supersonic – Paris (FR)
June 16 – Hellfest – Clisson (FR)
June 17 – La Zone – Liege (BE)
June 18 – Patronaat - Haarlem (NL)
Helms Alee will be back to Europe this year for Hellfest Open Air Festival and Mystic Festival. We're working on more European shows. Stay tuned!
Info: www.helmsalee.net
Last month, Astral Noize packed its bags and boarded a comically short flight to the Netherlands to attend Roadburn Festival 2022. As the first in-person edition of the celebrated event since 2019 many were simply thrilled to be attending at all, but never one to play it safe the festival has continued to diversify and expand its own definition of heaviness; consider this year’s introduction of a bona fide jazz stage, or the incredible performances of UK Grime MCs Flowdan and Logan playing alongside The Bug.
We spoke to a number of the artists playing across the four day event, and in the coming days and weeks will be sharing these discussions under the banner Roadburn Recall.
Below you’ll find our first interview, with Ben Verellen of Helms Alee.
So, on Roadburn and the fact that this is your first rest date since the festival. My first question really is, how is the ‘romance’ of being on the road in ‘22? How does it feel to be back at it?
Ben Verellen: That’s been the big question. And, you know, we hadn’t done any kind of travelling to do music, obviously, for the last three years. So on paper it sounds dreamy, tagging along with our good buddies in Russian Circles. And in Europe, where touring is so well accommodated compared to the States. We’re very much in the comfort of a best case tour scenario for guys like us. So it all sounded like it was going to be dreamy, but then there was the fear of, well, how’s it gonna feel? To be really out there and really away from home and just sitting in a van all day, how’s that gonna feel? All my memories are the best parts of it, but then getting back down to it and then inserting additional stress and anxiety around COVID stuff, it’s kind of a question mark, sort of looming. But, you know, we’re three weeks into about a six week tour. And the conversations have all been about how amazing it’s been.
And also, we’re a few years older than last time we did this kind of thing. So there’s that as well. It’s another factor. So we’re figuring out how some of that has played into different ways to do things, how hard to hit it, trying a little more self care. Self preservation is kind of part of the calculation these days, but we all seem to be keeping our head’s on, and still having a good time. So it’s awesome, it kind of forces you to solve some problems that probably could have been dealt with a few years earlier. Like maybe we shouldn’t go out all night, or at all, maybe you should just kind of keep it together. Because tours are exhausting enough as it is, but it’s always tempting to be like, oh I can see all these old friends and catch up! We’re finding a balance.
Full interview via astralnoizeuk.com
Seattle three-piece Helms Alee has released a new album Keep This Be The Way available via Sargent House. Across the span of their first five studio albums, the trio zeroed in on different aspects of their sound - a blend of lilting siren songs, crushing Northwest thunder and sludge, angular econo-rock, and heady guitar pop while retaining their no-frills, meat-and-potatoes approach in the studio. But with this Helms Alee have expanded their palette by delving into the production possibilities afforded by recording the album themselves, creating their most dynamic and technicolored work to date.
When the pandemic hit, guitarist/vocalist Ben Verellen, bassist/vocalist Dana James, and drummer/vocalist Hozoji Matheson-Margullis found refuge in their music and bunkered down in a makeshift studio in Verellen’s amplifier shop. Through the remainder of 2020 and into early 2021, the band wrote an album as a distraction from the surrounding turbulence, recording songs with the assistance of Ron Harrell as they were writing them, composing the material with the added benefit of hearing them come together from the engineer’s chair. Keep This Be the Way still very much sounds like a Helms Alee record, but it’s their first album that diverts from the faithful recreation of their live sound and delves into a vibrant tapestry of surreal sounds and invented spaces.
This new approach is immediately evident on album opener “See Sights Smell Smells,” where reverse cymbal crashes, fragmented piano, layered drums, woozy drones, saxophone freak-outs, and trippy vocal treatments transport the listener to an altered state of exhilarated anticipation. The song basks in studio manipulations before depositing the listeners on the shores of the title track. “Keep This Be the Way” adheres closer to standard Helms Alee operating procedures with sparkling guitar arpeggios, syncopated drum patterns, and beguiling vocal melodies in the verses juxtaposed against blown-out bottom-heavy riffs and roaring harmonies in the choruses, until the song descends into a smoky mélange of groaning bass and air-raid siren whines in the final measures. Much like the self-recorded swan song of Unwound Leaves Turn Inside You, Keep This Be the Way showcases an ability to walk the line between studio experimentation and faithful representations of the organic core of the material.
Streaming here: found.ee/HelmsAlee_KeepThis
On April 29th Seattle based three-piece Helms Alee will release their new album Keep This Be The Way on Sargent House. Across the span of their first five studio albums, the trio zeroed in on different aspects of their sound – a blend of lilting siren songs, crushing Northwest thunder and sludge, angular econo-rock, and heady guitar pop while retaining their no-frills, meat-and-potatoes approach in the studio. But with this Helms Alee have expanded their palette by delving into the production possibilities afforded by recording the album themselves, creating their most dynamic and technicolored work to date.
Helms Alee are featured in the new issue of The Wire: Adventures In Modern Music
Get your copy: thewire.co.uk/issues/459
