Bloodwood is an intriguing Ambient Hard Rock project emerging from Perth, Western Australia, blending dark atmospheres with complex arrangements. With their latest release “Dark Simulator,” they push further into immersive sonic landscapes. We talked with the band to learn more about their origins, musical influences, creative
process, and perspectives on today’s music scene.
Could you start by telling us about the origins of Bloodwood? How did the band come together and what motivated you to create this project?
Bloodwood started its very early days as just a 2 piece with Callum (bassist/vocalist) and Jason (Drummer) jamming out a lot and writing some riffs. Eventually We grabbed Jordy as our guitarist and soon after Jethro as a guitarist/vocalist. We all have a strong love of creating interesting and original music and just bonded so much creatively from the first jam sessions and knew there was something really special to tap into.
How would you describe your sound to someone who is discovering Bloodwood for the first time?
Atmospheric, Melodic, Heavy Rock. It’s a hard one!
We aim for a really diverse sound with lots of genre bending elements but always focus on creative and interesting song structures and sounds.
What are the main musical and non-musical influences that have shaped your Style?
We are huge fans of Karnivool (a fellow Perth band/ legends if you will), Radiohead, Porcupine Tree, Yob, Opeth, Gojira and all those dark heavy bands. We also take a huge amount of inspiration from visual art and fiction, specifically sci fi. Most of our music is written with strong themes and references spanning from our love of science fiction.
“Dark Simulator” is your newest release. Can you share the concept behind the album and what themes or ideas you wanted to explore with this work?
We came into writing this album wanting to create a really flowing and interesting linear piece of music. Not pigeonholed into any one genre and always flowing onto the next tunes and transforming into a new sound before you realise it’s happening. Thematically we were very tapped into a kind of doomsday and apocalyptic thing, a real hopeless end of days feeling but mixed with some more relatable real world struggles.
We like to keep things quite vague so the listeners can take from it whatever it evokes in them, it’s always the most fun hearing what someone else takes from your music.
What was the creative process like for “Dark Simulator”? Were there any particular challenges or memorable moments during songwriting and recording?
A lot of the album had been written and gigged a fair bit before the recording process started, we had written the songs knowing it was the direction we wanted to take the band in, a few however just came during the writing process. From the Inside and Ruliad came later on and really captured that diversity we are going for in the album.
The really memorable parts are the drum sessions, we don’t like to record to a click so we take the drums in one full studio session then we record our layers on top of that. We had a two day intense session playing the full album non stop recording countless drum takes of the whole thing, it was a grind but is something we all look back on fondly, pure music and nothing else entering the mind for 48hrs straight.
Since your beginnings, how do you think your sound has evolved? Are there new directions or experiments you have embraced with this album?
Early days we were a little more raw and narrowed down to pure Rock and Psych sounds. For this album we pushed things from bits of Black Metal, Post-Rock, Alt-Rock, Stoner, Doom, Post-Metal and a bunch of other sounds that are hard to describe really. We approached it with the idea of never having things stay the same too long or getting stagnant.
Live performances can be quite different from studio recordings, especially with Atmospheric Music like yours. How do you approach translating your sound on stage, and do you have any memorable live experiences you’d like to
share?
We are all so inspired by live performance and focus on being able to reproduce everything as close to the recorded songs as possible. We have a lot of tones and Atmospheric Sounds going on but between Jordy and Jethro they can cover it all
through their guitar and pedalboard setups. The drums always hit hard live and the bass is always cranking.
One of our best live shows was a performance at a stoner rock festival in Perth suitably named “Spliffs and Riffs”, the atmosphere was amazing, the crowd was there to Rock out and the sound was perfect. It was a great show.
Do you have any live shows planned in the near future to support “Dark Simulator” and connect with your audience directly?
Yes we are going to launch the album with a show on August 8th at Lyrics Underground, we will be playing the album in full, selling merch and hanging out with fans and other bands we love, if you’re in Perth come down!
How do you see Bloodwood’s place within the current Psychedelic Stoner and Doom Metal scenes? Are there particular trends or shifts in these genres that excite or concern you?
Thats a tough question, we don’t necessarily like to get too bogged down into any one genre and scene, we love the Psych/Stoner and Doom Metal sound and take a lot of influences from it so hopefully we can be seen as innovators there pushing the limits of the genre and borrowing sounds and inspiration from a diverse range.
The genre as a whole is really exciting, It feels like it’s growing a lot and becoming far more popular in the live scene, at least here in Australia. People are ready to move on from the soft indi rock/ surf rock sound into something a bit more heavy and we are all for it!
What are your plans moving forward? Do you have upcoming releases, tours, or collaborations in the pipeline?
We will gig and tour the album as much as we can, as a band from a smaller city in Aus the dream is always to branch out and travel oversees for shows and tours so that will be our big focus!
Outside of music, are there other artistic or cultural influences that inspire you and inform your creative work?
Movies, Sci Fi novels, concept art. We love anything that’s really conceptual, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a huge favorite movie of ours, books like Blood Meridian, anything a bit gritty we love and take inspiration from.
Finally, what message would you like to leave for your listeners, especially those encountering Bloodwood for the first time through “Dark Simulator”?
Thankyou for listening to our album! We hope you really enjoy it and take something away from it, be it your own interpretation of the album or just enjoyment of the Heavy riffs!
Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us. We wish you all the best with “Dark Simulator” and look forward to following your future endeavors.
Purchase “Dark Simulator” on Bandcamp: https://bloodwood.bandcamp.com/album/dark-simulator
Stream the full album via Progressive Rock Journal YouTube Channel below: