Following the recent announcement of their upcoming three track EP, The Dying Pines, HUNSTMEN have today shared a cover of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s Carry On – available exclusively via Bandcamp. Carry On is the first song to be taken from The Dying Pines ahead of its April 22 release via Prosthetic Records and is accompanied with an intimate performance video directed by HUNTSMEN bassist Marc Stranger-Najjar.
WATCH THE OFFICIAL VIDEO FOR CARRY ON BELOW.
Stream and pre-order The Dying Pines here.
Speaking on their cover of Carry On, the band comments: “The theme of surviving, navigating, and attempting to transmute world-destroying change has been a constant in our lyrical content. And, we’ve been transparent about our love of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young as a huge influence both growing up and now for us as a band, especially in terms of vocal arrangements.
“Carry On is a song about living across the dividing line between comfortable innocence and a dark night of the soul, and finding redemption on the other side. Even the two halves of the song project this mood. We wanted to show listeners our interpretation, in which the second half of the song doesn’t just emphasize the freedom of moving forward, but also the echoes of pain and loss from what was left behind.”
The hiatus from regular band activity saw HUNTSMEN return to their roots as a band, writing on an acoustic guitar and leaning into the narrative storytelling found on their debut full length, American Scrap. An invitation from Roadburn festival in the Netherlands to perform American Scrap in full at the 2022 edition of the festival gave them cause to revisit the songs that saw the band strike out with an Americana-metal sound that has been woven throughout their body of work.
A collaborative approach to the songwriting has lent itself well to blending the strengths of the individual band members, as well as allowing space for threads of their own personal stories to to make their way into the sonic tapestry of new tracks, The Dying Pines and Let The Buried Lie Forgotten. The rich instrumental layering and warm vocal harmonies are a vessel for conveying bleak themes of loss and existentialist contemplation. Once again, the evocative cover artwork has been created by drummer, Ray Knipe, complementing the organic sound of the EP, which was recorded at Electrical Audio/Hypercube studios by Sanford Parker, and mastered by Collin Jordan (The Boiler Room).
Elements of the post-apocalyptic vibe of Mandala of Fear
find their way into this new EP, but The Dying Pines sits outside of the story arc present on the band’s full lengths – a vignette that lets us know the heart of this band still beats strong, and offers a hint of what’s still to come.