Oozing Wound keeps on oozing: Zack Weil talks "High Anxiety" + New Music Video


“I’m so sick of rock-'n'-roll!” screams lead singer/guitarist Zack Weil on the new single “Tween Shitbag” from Chicago’s indefinably noisy Oozing Wound. The song ends with Weil howling: “Ta da! You live a lie!” as if he’s lifting the curtain to reveal the music industry for what it really is: a conglomeration of shit that sells.

“Tween Shitbag” is only three-and-a-half minutes of Oozing Wound’s re-exploration of their noise rock roots on their upcoming full-length record High Anxiety, set to be released on March 15th via Thrill Jockey Records. A brand-new music video for the song can be viewed below -- the black-and-white performance varies greatly from Oozing Wound's past music videos: it’s animated and it doesn’t contain an obvious homage to Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” video or include various people shotgunning PBRs shot in slow motion.

Oozing Wound -- a weed-friendly outfit made up of Weil, Kevin Cribbin credited with “Bass and Digital Bleeps,” and Kyle Reynolds on “Drums and Piano Thuds” -- sound on High Anxiety a lot like the classic thrash we’re used to especially from their second full-length Earth Suck (2014). But, there’s a new proggy element including the incorporation of brass and woodwind instruments. The record starts with a whole lot of feedback and distortion followed by long guitar solos, critical references to flat-earthers, notions of obliteration, and how it’s easy to get into heaven. This record honors Chicago’s anti-music scene; not surprising considering the album was recorded at Albini’s Electrical Audio Studio.

Amidst the mixed reviews of their last album Whatever Forever (2016), one Pitchfork reviewer asked the band to “open up a bit more.” Considering a two-and-a-half minute guitar solo appears on one new song -- alongside various beautiful sonic explosions set to annihilate eardrums but proselytize new listeners -- I’d say they have.

We had the chance to talk with Weil about High Anxiety, Chicago’s amnesiac music scene, and how strange it is to actually consider what makes up the creative process.

Link to Invisible Oranges