By Brian Tucker

Instrumental post-rock and metal trio Waul has recorded a follow-up to their excellent 2015 debut album “Esmerelda.”

Drummer Brandon Lamm said Waul spent two days making what they’d spent the last two years planning.

The band – Abram Young (bass, piano), Jarrod Drobot (guitar), and Lamm recorded again with Ian Millard of Dogwood Lane Studio but with a different approach. They had the idea to perform songs live in a cabin in Brunswick County and produce material with a theme.

“Esmerelda” was the first time Abram, Jarrod and Brandon had recorded together and wanted to do things differently this time around following a fairly traditional process in making the debut.

Lamm said about a year ago the band decided they wanted – the sounds of nature, playing live in a room, and each member writing a track to put on the new album in addition to four songs they planned to record.

In April 2016 they met at Abram’s place in Brunswick County and recorded sounds of woods and surrounding area throughout the evening. On the family property was an old one-room cabin his cousin Wayne lived in before passing away. After seeing the inside of the cabin – rustic and containing a pair of antique pianos, an old wood stove, and had a sitting porch, the band knew where to record new material.

“We brought the idea to Ian and were surprised how excited he was,” Lamm said. “He put together a portable recording rack and joined us at the cabin the last week of April (2017). The layout (inside the cabin) was much like a live stage performance with us all set up facing across the room.”

In addition, Jarrod recently had configured his guitar setup with dual amplifiers to run effects in true stereo. Now it was possible for Waul to perform live and deliver a more atmospheric sound. In the cabin they mic’d the instruments plus multiple room mics and then proceeded to record for the next eight to ten hours. They captured multiple takes of four songs before moving on to recording their individual songs.

“The last thing we recorded in the cabin was a piece Abram had written on one of the antique pianos in there,” Lamm said. “His father recently worked on it, got it tuned up and in playing order. Ian, Jarrod and I sat quietly as Abram prepared to track his song which we had never heard. It was beautiful. When he finished, we knew we had done what we set out to do.”

The following day back in the studio at Dogwood Lane Lamm and Jarrod tracked acoustic pieces and by day’s end they had a new album. Currently they’re mixing and mastering the album, hoping to have it out by the end of summer.

Listen to Esmerelda over at Bandcamp.