Forged by tenacious friendship and a shared passion for creating dense-yet-dynamic sounds, Glasgow-based heavy band Cwfen (pronounced ‘Coven’) have recently shared their debut full length album, Sorrows.
Released via New Heavy Sounds, it’s a record that “builds, burns, collapses and resurrects” – a potent amalgamation of their simultaneously doom-laden, diaphanous noise that the four-piece are preparing to perform live across the UK on their upcoming tour supporting L.A. “doomgaze” trio Faetooth.
We think one of the best ways to get to know a band is by asking what music inspired them to write in the first place. We caught up with Cwfen’s lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Agnes Alder to ask about her “Five Favourites” – and she picked five tracks by an eclectic range of artists who have inspired her songwriting techniques.
Check out her choices below and scroll down to watch the official video for Cwfen’s single ‘Wolfsbane’ too…
1. PJ Harvey – ‘Rid of Me’
Of course, it starts with Polly Jean. That intro, how it hangs in the air just a beat too long, daring you. Then her voice, understated but razor-sharp, with those strange, confrontational lyrics. They feel like a promise scratched in broken glass. The breathing, the raw vulnerability, the sudden jarring falsetto before the whole thing detonates into that chorus. It’s a glorious, twisted mess that should collapse under its own weight, but instead it coalesces into something furious and powerful. The sheer audacity of a woman writing something this defiantly fucked up was so interesting to me. I didn’t think women got to write songs like this. She was standing there with her guitar, like some sort of wild goddess, telling you how she was about to become your beautiful, unavoidable problem. I wanted to be even a tenth as cool as her. Still do.
2. Melvins – ‘At the Stake’
This song changed my brain and planted the seed for Cwfen. I remember the exact moment, driving home through this long, flat stretch on the way to Fife, the dusk settling in, the sky dark and bruised. Then thunder cracked, lightning whipped across the sky and this song began. It was like someone put on a film. The storm, the landscape, the history of all the women persecuted as witches in this part of the country. It all became this enormous swell of feeling. That moment etched itself into me. Every time I hear those opening chords, I’m back in that storm. It made me realise I wanted to make music that told a story, that grabbed people by the gut and didn’t let go. It’s a simple song, but it hits you right in the middle. That’s the brutal beauty of it.
3. King Woman – ‘Hem’
I haven’t heard a King Woman track that I don’t love, but this is the one I reach for most. It’s the oppressive quiet; that thick, airless atmosphere that settles like a shroud. And the misery of it – and I mean that in the most loving way. Kris Esfandiari’s voice is otherworldly. Ethereal, melancholy, but this powerful anchor in everything that’s swirling around it. The whole thing is a slow, elegant descent into the dark. It’s claustrophobic but it’s not hopeless. There’s a vulnerability there, a kind of quiet reckoning. I imagine it as the sound of confronting your demons in the loneliest hours and finding strange beauty in the pain. It’s the heavy blanket you pull over yourself when nothing else will do. Their songs do this better than anyone’s.
4. Thorr’s Hammer – ‘Norge’
This track made me fall in love with doom. That funeral-dirge quality, giving way to sheer, elemental brutality. I just loved it from the moment I heard it and thought Runhild was just so bloody cool. It made me realise I wanted to learn to scream. I always think listening to it feels like a summoning. Like someone dragging ancient, indifferent spirits out from the stones. It’s monolithic. Unhurried. Unrelenting. It showed me what bleak beauty could sound like and I wanted to bottle some of that for myself.
5. Lingua Ignota – ‘Do You Doubt Me Traitor’
Gosh, how do I try and explain how this one makes me feel. It’s sort of what I imagine listening to an exorcism might be like. That deceptive fragility at the start, the slow build, then the absolute torrent of rage and sound. Raw. Ferocious. Absolutely disintegrating into the unhinged. The way she rolls every word around in her mouth, cradled deliberately or spat out like a curse. I once had it on in the car and had to turn it off because my passenger was having such a visceral reaction to it. That’s how potent it is.
It gave me the same shock as the first time I heard Diamanda Galás doing The Litanies of Satan. It’s more black metal than most black metal and it has directly influenced how I perform. The feral, unchained part of me on stage owes a lot to this, and finding a way to tap into that part of yourself where you lose all control. And those harmonies at the end are divine, like some sort of twisted Greek Chorus. They have this unsettling, sacred-but-desecrated energy. I wanted to try and do something similar, treating the vocal arrangement as choral rather than lead and backing on Sorrows. This track is a masterclass in catharsis. It’s awe-inspiring in the truest sense of the word.
Thanks to Agnes for sharing her favourites with us!
Follow Cwfen on bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify, Instagram & Facebook
Cwfen will be supporting Faetooth on their upcoming UK tour.
Tickets here
13/06 – Glasgow, Hug & Pint
14/06 – Huddersfield, Northern Quarter
17/06 – London, The Black Heart
18/06 – Manchester, Star & Garter
19/06 – Norwich, Arts Centre
20/06 – Ramsgate, Music Hall
Get In Her Ears 