Yob’s latest album, Our Raw Heart, has been receiving high marks all across the metal community. I myself chimed in last week with nothing but praise for this accomplishment, and the hype is absolutely real for this beast of an album. With a North American tour with Bell Witch recently underway, things are looking great for the Oregon doom trio. Before heading out, I was able to catch up with bassist Aaron Rieseberg, who was able to give us some insighto n the going ons with the band, the new album, and the upcoming tour.
Metal Macine: There’s a lot of ground covered on Our Raw Heart. I know the band, as long as you’ve been in it, has wide spectrum of variety, but what was the writing like for this album?
Aaron Rieseberg: Oh man, we wanted to do a double record originally. Mike wrote all of these soulful ballads, some crushing stuff, and there was also this really brutal, dark side we had going on. We were gonna do two 45 minute records with one more lighter, more celestial, and one more evil, primal, super punishing side, but we decided to just combine the two. It gave it that feeling of a really varied piece, some really high extremes of some of our most beautiful, spacious, darkest and heaviest.
Is there any particular song on the album that really stick out to you? The first few listens I had always left me impressed “Beauty in Falling Leaves” in particular.
I would say, for me, it’s “Beauty” as well. It kind of all came together in the studio, and we had it roughly outlined, but we felt like it needed more work in the rest of the sound. We were trying to get the whole sound in one take, so we’d talk about it, run it, talk about a couple of the parts, hit it again… We just got that take that felt strong, that felt like the best time we ever played it, and it came out great. I’m most proud of this Yob album, out of all the ones I’ve played on. We’ve been feeling really good about all the songs and sounds. Mike was feeling really good and healthy, even though there’s some days where he wasn’t feeling so hot, but for the most part he was feeling super strong. It was a really celebratory vibe in the studio, we were all feeling really relaxed all around.
Was there a lot of pressure you guys felt like you were under? Both Atma and Clearing the Path to Ascend received their fair share of critical acclaim, let alone having to follow up several other well-received albums.
I guess the pressure wasn’t there, because we were elated that Mike was doing so well. We didn’t expect to be making a record, and it just felt like we were on this streak and it was flowing really heavily. We just were so stoked to be playing, and we knew we wanted to do something very different from the last one. We were going to be taking it very differently, looking for new heights and new lows. Clearing we wanted to be a bit sleepier, more slower paced, which is what we achieved, but this time we wanted more shifts in the tempos, more colors, and new dynamics. So I guess that kinda lessened the pressure, so we were going for something very different.
The upcoming tour has you guys with Bell Witch opening, who had a really big year with Mirror Reaper. You could argue that it’s a perfect match between you two guys, especially since both your acts have received such praise.
Yeah definitely, we’re all big fans of Bell Witch, and good buddies. It’s gonna make for a really awesome time, and I’m so stoked to see those guys every night. We’re both doom, but we do it very differently. I think it’ll have enough diversity.
Our Raw Heart is the band’s first release on Relapse, which obviously seems like a perfect fit for you guys. Any insight on how the experience has been?
So far it’s been fucking great. We were really stoked to work with Orion (Landau, album cover artist) on this record, but also we’ve been friends with Matt Jacobsen and Bob Lugo after meeting them around town in Portland at shows, and we’ve talked to them years ago about making it happen. It just clicked for all of us while recording this album.They did the vinyl for the last album, so we decided to go all in for this one, and we really couldn’t be happier.
Our Raw heart is available everywhere now. You can stream it its entirety below.
