Helms Alee

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

Helms Alee will be playing Hellfest Open Air on June 16th, 2023

Tickets: https://www.hellfest.fr

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.

Full interview available via echoesanddust.com

Helms Alee are featured in the new issue of The Wire: Adventures In Modern Music 

Get your copy: thewire.co.uk/issues/459

The Electric Roach Tour: The Melvins, Helms Alee and Harsh Mellow 

Tickets: helmsalee.net

Jun 15 Long Beach, CA - Alex's Bar 

Jun 16 Pioneertown, CA - Pappy and Harriet's 

Jun 18 Tucson, AZ - Club Congress 

Jun 21 New Orleans, LA - One Eyed Jack's 

Jun 22 Birmingham, AL - Saturn 

Jun 23 Knoxville, TN - Bijou Theatre 

Jun 24 Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle 

Jun 25  Richmond, VA - The Broadberry 

Jun 27  Hamden, CT - Space Ballroom 

Jun 28 Providence, RI - Fete Music Hall 

Jun 29 Syracuse, NY - The Westcott Theater 

Jul 1  Bethlehem, PA - MusikFest Cafe at ArtsQuest Center 

Jul 2  Huntington, WV - The Loud 

Jul 3  Detroit, MI - El Club 

Jul 5  Madison, WI - High Noon Saloon 

Jul 6  Davenport, IA - The Raccoon Motel 

Jul 7  Des Moines, IA - Wooly's 

Jul 9  Fargo, ND - The Hall at Fargo Brewing 

Jul 10 Sioux Falls, SD - Icon Lounge 

Jul 12 Salt Lake City, UT - Metro Music Hall 

Jul 14 Bozeman, MT - The ELM 

Jul 15 Spokane, WA - Knitting Factory Concert House 

Jul 16 Portland, OR - Hawthorne Theatre 

Jul 17 Eugene, OR - Sessions Music Hall 

Jul 19 Roseville, CA - Goldfield Trading Post 

Jul 20 Berkeley, CA - Cornerstone

Helms Alee have serially mastered several hardcore crafts, expertly attacking a new style on each record they've put out. Last month, with the release of "See Sights Smell Smells," the Washington three-piece announced their sixth studio LP, Keep This Be the Way, arriving April 29 via Sargent House. Today, they've shared the album's second and final single, "Tripping Up the Stairs." 

Like the previous track, the new song is a hybrid beast, this time mixing elements of post-punk, stoner rock, and sludge into a sonic stew in which each element manages to retain its potency. Keep This is their first self-recorded project, and this autonomy brought new possibilities for the band, allowing them to expand their already slippery identity. 

In Ron Harrell's distinctly gothic visual treatment, bodies rise from murky swamps, waves crash on rocky shores, and mud seeps into every nook and cranny of the screen. "The idea that I wanted to convey when we set out filming the video was an uncomplicated yet visually compelling version of finding... control," Harrell notes. "To me it became as simple as floating at sea and finding sure footing on land. Helms Alee has a pretty hydrous identity as it is, so incorporating that part came naturally. I had an initial cut of the video that was a little cleaner and [more] realistic, visually speaking. The band saw it, and what I heard them say was 'that’s great, now fuck it up.' So I fucked it up and this is the result."

Full interview via thefader.com