Nashville’s Yautja is a world-class metal band in our own backyard. For the past decade, the trio — named for the trophy-hunting alien species from the Predator films — has captivated audiences locally and abroad with its atypical triple-threat of hardcore-punk grit and speed, death-metal growls and blast beats, and molasses-thick, Melvins-esque sludge. Where most metal bands’ sounds lie on one end of the visceral-or-cerebral spectrum, the racket conjured by bassist Kayhan Vaziri, guitarist Shibby Poole and drummer Tyler Coburn occupies the middle. A carefully crafted mixture of paint-peeling noise-rock riffs, metallic pinch harmonics, gut-rumbling low-end churn, and off-the-wall but in-the-pocket percussion, it’s simultaneously complex, forceful and clear.
One recorded example of the group at the peak of its powers is “Faith Resigned,” a seven-minute elegy of repetition and feedback from 2014’s debut Songs of Descent. Another is “Crawling,” which closes Descent’s rawer 2015 companion EP Songs of Lament with a shotgun marriage of trudging doom and grindcore chaos. Both Songs volumes were recorded locally with Mikey Allred at his studio Dark Arts Audio, and issued by Richmond, Va., label Forcefield. The group’s catalog also includes a 2016 split with Boston band Fórn and 2017’s one-sided 12-inch Dead Soil. Last summer came the lone digital track “Test Subject.” Things have been relatively quiet, but they’re about to get a whole lot louder.
Friday will mark the release of a split 7-inch with Chepang, a grindcore combo from Queens by way of Kathmandu, Nepal, who Yautja met at Maryland Death Fest. “They do a ton to contribute to and support underground metal [and] grind from all over the world,” says Vaziri in an email to the Scene. Yautja’s contributions to the release are the aforementioned “Test Subject,” a breakneck-paced crust-punk exercise in the spirit of Memphis’ legendary His Hero Is Gone, plus a second aptly titled scorcher, “The Kindling.” The former features vocal assists from Maddy Madeira and David Reichley from fellow Nashvillian outfits Sallow and Thirdface.Â
Those two tracks are just a foreshock, however. They come from an eight-day session the band undertook in January 2020 with Scott Evans of fellow thinking-person’s alternative-metalers Kowloon Walled City, who flew out from Oakland, Calif., to produce the band’s long-awaited second LP. He and the band stayed and worked at Electrical Audio, the Chicago studio where owner-operator Steve Albini has lent his naturalistic touch to influential records by The Jesus Lizard, Neurosis and many others who are part of Yautja’s musical DNA.
“It was pretty surreal being in a studio where so many amazing records have been made — a dreamlike scenario,” says Vaziri. Though they didn’t work with Albini directly, “it was rad just seeing him in his work environment and engaging in small talk here and there.”
There are still finishing touches to put on the new album, like finalizing a title and artwork. These are details the band always pays attention to — note the intricate etching adorning the back of Dead Soil on vinyl. But they carry some extra weight this time around, as Yautja appears poised to make a great leap forward. The album, set for a late-summer release, is the band’s debut for Philadelphia’s Relapse Records, a label whose impact on heavy music over the past three decades is comparable to Sub Pop’s contributions to indie rock or Epitaph’s to pop-punk. The full-length, Vaziri promises, will be worth the wait.Â
“We’ve been working on this material for five years,” he says. “I’d call them the most dialed-in songs we have. Some longer ones for sure, but also some quicker, faster bangers. It’s on-brand for us — we’re definitely still a metal band — but I’m hoping it reaches a bunch of ears who’ve never heard us, and surprises them. It’s a hefty slab of music.”
