photos by Lounge708 Photography
“Brutally grim subjects call for brutally grim music, and WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS have that covered.” – No Clean Singing
No Clean Singing is hosting an exclusive stream of In The Glow Of The Vatican Fire, the crushing tenth album from Connecticut-based avant-sludge metal outfit WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS. The stream precedes the official release of the album tomorrow on Argonauta Records.
Celebrating the band’s twentieth anniversary in 2025, WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS delivers In The Glow Of The Vatican Fire, a record as ambitious as it is violent. Inspired by man’s infinite capacity for cruelty, In The Glow Of The Vatican Fire evokes the numbing of human compassion, the sorrow of dead leaves, and the eternal rage of scorned gods. The band’s music is a feeling, an involuntary and instinctive recoiling from horror. It is the sound of emotions corrupted and driven to their extremes. It is the silent cry of the dead astronaut in space. It asks one simple question: When your soul dies, what will it leave behind?
In The Glow Of The Vatican Fire was recorded and mixed by the band at Room SevenZeroEight, mastered by James Plotkin of Plotkinworks (Earth, Khanate, Pelican), and completed with cover art concept and inspiration by MR and layout/design by Bill Kole.
WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS’ Steve Wieda states, “Putting art out to the universe is both thrilling and terrifying. We put a tremendous amount of effort into making this album and hope that the listeners hear the blood, sweat, and tears which went into it. We hope that you enjoy the journey, no matter where it brings you.”
Within their in-depth critique of the album adjoining the early stream, No Clean Singing writes, “Brutally grim subjects call for brutally grim music, and WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS have that covered. The reverberating pulse-and-moan of the chords is gargantuan and craggy, and both the riffage and the drums slug damned hard too as the vocals fly above them, accompanied by eerily woozy instrumentation… Depending on where you are, the songs channel rage and ruin in headlong berserker assaults and bomb-dropping diversions; they give sorrow beautiful and heart-breaking forms, some of them folksy and tender, others like pale ghosts; they create unnerving nightmares, unreal and malignant, an assortment of heaving musical monstrosities and busy red-eyed fiends; they dose the mind with narcotics and hallucinogens; sometimes they slow and sound soulfully jazzy (revealing yet another aspect of Amber Leigh‘s remarkable talents), and sometimes they make you want to bounce ’til your legs give out or feel like you’re crawling through a blasted field of gutted corpses.”
Listen to WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS’ entire In The Glow Of The Vatican Fire LP early only at No Clean Singing RIGHT HERE.
In The Glow Of The Vatican Fire will be released through Argonauta Records on CD, 2xLP, and digitally this Friday, June 27th. Physical preorders are live at the label webshop HERE.
Having played SXSW, The New England Stoner & Doom Fest, and toured parts of the East and West Coasts of the United States and Canada over the years, WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS will tour in support of the new album. Dates are already confirmed throughout the East Coast of North America throughout the late Spring and through Summer, with more shows in the works. See confirmed dates below and expect to see updates shortly.
WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS Tour Dates:
7/17/2025 Nostalgia – Bethpage, NY
7/18/2025 Bovine Sex Club – Toronto, ON
7/19/2025 The Mansion – Kingston, ON
7/20/2025 Quai Des Brumes – Montreal, QC
7/22/2025 Abandoned Building Brewery – Easthampton, MA
7/23/2025 1st Republic Brewing – Essex, VT
8/23/2025 Cherry Street Station – Wallingford, CT
8/29/2025 The Cellar – Hamden, CT
When the soul dies, the animated meat is left behind to walk the earth in blind circles, mechanical life awaiting decay, feathered beings in the dark eating clay. In this space, WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS lurks, a paper-thin sheet of ice covering a blackwater lake, salivating for the weight of the unsuspecting.
With a doom style both psychedelic and unsettling – in a word, Lovecraftian – WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS is singer and guitarist Aaron Lewis’ nightmarish vision, the current lineup fleshed out with experimental vocalist Amber Leigh and bassist Steve Wieda. Since 2005, the band has resisted classification, having been called heavy, daunting, overwhelming, and unnerving. Long, sprawling songs encompassing both the hideous and the beautiful, the chaotic and the structured, the dissonant and the harmonious. The band weaves tapestries of sound and emotion – dirty, decomposing motifs interspersed with moments of psychotic frenzy, marked by sudden, unexpected shifts in mood, perspective, and tempo. Some of these interruptions evolve into extended and repeated sections, others are nihilistic sonic cul-de-sacs that dissolve into wet ashes.
WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS In The Glow Of The Vatican Fire Lineup:
Steve Wieda – bass, backing vocals
Amber Leigh – vocals
Aaron Lewis – vocals, guitar
Rob Birkbeck – drums
Joaquin Gouin – additional vocals on “The Deep Well”
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