Metal Band Alluvial Opens the Door to a New Type of Heavy

Wes Hauch, guitarist of Atlanta-based deathcore outfit Alluvial, pauses. He's pondering one of metal music’s most enduring questions: How heavy can it get?

“Hmm, that’s a good question...,” he begins.

Hauch, who previously played in tech-death groups Black Crown Initiate and the Faceless, believes there’s “a lot under the hood still” when it comes to exploring audible extremity. “Sometimes you think that it couldn’t get heavier, then you hear something that’s really fucking heavy,” he says, pointing to a band such as Humanity’s Last Breath as a more recent example of that.

“It would seem that even as much as everyone’s tried, we haven’t reached a limitation on sonics yet,” Hauch explains. “Records are still getting louder, gnarlier and heavier. Whatever kind of different techniques there are to make things heavier sonically, apparently that still seems like it’s going.”

For Hauch, a madman of a guitarist, it takes more than just a “pile of sick riffs” to make a song sound heavy. In Alluvial, which formed in 2016, properly highlighting the vocal attack of Kevin Muller is a priority for Hauch and bandmates Tim Walker (bass) and Zach Dean (drums). And for good reason, as the former live vocalist for Suffocation is a commanding, powerhouse frontman.
Alluvial started off the day by dropping the four-song EP Death Is But a Door, a more doom-and-gloom offering than the band's previous two full-lengths, including the 2017 instrumental debut The Deep Longing for Annihilation. On Death Is But a Door, the four-piece exchanges some of its signature speed for more deliberate downbeat death doom. Alluvial’s newfound heaviness can be heard on the EP’s title track. For Hauch and his bandmates, it’s about evoking a certain response from the audience, about providing a fix, if you will.

“As a songwriter, you’re kind of a drug dealer. You’re trying to get people high on brain chemicals,” he explains, adding that there are many different ways to achieve that, too.

“The indicators of a good song are if it makes those chemicals go off in your brain a few times during those four or five minutes that it’s going on. If people want to hear the song again several times, I think your job was done correctly,” he continues. “They want to get high again. I don’t think that will ever really end; I think that’s going to be something that everyone’s going to want to chase. It’s all set up to make those chemicals go off in your brain.”

Get hooked on Alluvial when the band takes the Gothic Theatre on Friday, January 26. Veil of Maya, AngelMaker, Left to Suffer and Reflections are also on the bill.

The latest release, which the band sees as more of a bridge between its 2021 album, Sarcoma, and the next full-length, is a testament to how sometimes less is more. Growing up as a Slayer fanatic, Hauch finds inspiration in South of Heaven, Slayer’s fourth studio album and the followup to what many critics consider the best, and fastest, thrash album of all time, Reign in Blood.

“South of Heaven is the only record that they had a plan going into the studio — slow down, go in a more brooding and ominous direction,” he says. “But literally right after [the song] ‘South of Heaven,’ ‘Silent Scream’ automatically kicks in fast. It’s like you thought you had it figured out for a second, but here it is.”

Slayer, Hauch points out, redefined what heavy could be with that record. It’s one reason that Slayer is still king in his book and that South of Heaven is his favorite album.

“That’s peak Slayer for me. Don’t get me wrong; I fucking love most of the records, but South of Heaven is peak art for Slayer,” Hauch shares, adding that Slayer, more than any other band during that time, “left this indelible mark on metal music and changed it and affected many other genres outside of it.

“In a way, I would say Slayer is the most influential metal band of all time,” he adds.

So it makes sense when Hauch explains that Alluvial aims to operate in a similar fashion, particularly when it comes to how Slayer always delivered in making a record that sounds like no other act's work. “When you look at any of the press that Slayer has done over the years, they’ve made a concerted effort to make sure everyone knew what they were going to get — they’re going to get a Slayer record. Four records in, they established what a Slayer record sounds like. That’s a cool strategy,” he muses.

While there isn’t a concrete release date for Alluvial’s next album, though it may be as early as this year, the group is focused on further cementing its own unique sound. “I wouldn’t necessarily say you’re going to hear us have a song that you’d hear from Bring Me the Horizon or someone like that. It’s in a way figuring out a newer way to be darker and heavier and sadder and more pissed,” Hauch says, adding that it's more about “an overall vibe.”

“When I say that people won’t expect what we do next, I don’t mean too far off the beaten path. We’re not going to have a power-metal song,” he concludes. “Actually, fuck — who knows? Now that I said that, maybe we will.”

Alluvial, 5:30 p.m. Friday, January 26, Gothic Theatre, 3263 South Broadway. Tickets are $30.