California-based solo project/collaborator magnet WALKING BOMBS presents Blessings Bestrewn Part 1, the first in a two-part album sequence. Confirmed for release June 20th, the album’s details including its lead single have been posted.
WALKING BOMBS is the ever morphing and prolific brainchild vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Morgan Y. Evans. Blessings Bestrewn Part 1 arrives in the project’s busiest year to date, yet stands out among the recent rash of mixtapes, EPs, and singles as a more orchestrated and complex project. The record was largely recorded in upstate New York in 2022 prior to Evans’ relocation to California, after which it was slowly refined and completed over many months.
A bi-coastal effort that took three years to complete, Blessings Bestrewn Part 1 is the first part of a double album, color coded into two parts like Guns N’ Roses famed Use Your Illusion era. This album sees Evans performing electric and acoustic guitars/basses, trombone, organ, keys, glockenspiel, random percussion, and lead vocals. The record also features a wide cast of collaborators including members/alumni of Book Of Wyrms, Gridfailure, Shadow Witch, Globelamp, Chrome Waves, Cycle Sluts From Hell, Geezer, Stormland, Black Mesa and more.
Blessings Bestrewn Part 1 was co-produced by Ash Umhey and Morgan Y. Evans, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Umhey at his Orange Sound in Rhinebeck, New York, and completed with cover art by Elizabeth “Lizzie” Gomez Dapena and Morgan Y. Evans. The guest contributors’ recordings were handled by the respective artists, and random DIY/unorthodox recording tactics were used in several instances, including vocals recorded in a shower. One song was even written in 1993 by Morgan’s first Woodstock NY grunge band Melancholy and never recorded.
The lead single from the album, “Mirror Mosh” features John Fay (Black Mesa) on bass, Ash Umhey on guitar, David Brenner (Gridfailure) on backing vocals/pedals, Justin Zipperle (Shadow Witch) on drums, with Evans on rhythm guitar/vocals.
“I started the album out with sampled crickets because it is funny but also sometimes, we wonder if we are yelling into a void nowadays creatively or in online spaces that move fast or are apathetic, even while craving the blessings of privacy and community,” says Morgan Y. Evans. “The song ‘Mirror Mosh’ came from me reading the trans social commentator Contrapoints discuss online discourse fatigue on Twitter as it was shitting the bed. I was thinking about online spaces where people try so hard to make others doubt themselves in a vain scramble to feel superior. It is about Nazis and crybullies pretending they have thicker skin, essentially.”
“I got to use a lot of different ‘voices’ and cadences in this song and it was all purposeful,” Evans continues. “Faith No More, Bane, and mighty Sam Black Church all get a stylistic nod, in an effort to highlight people of value to our subculture. Everyone is such a hater nowadays. That is why the bridge with Gridfailure’s Dave Brenner screaming behind me encourages a ‘Fuck what you heard’ and putting plans into motion mentality. Go out and build something cool. Be the change you want to see and look in the mirror through your own eyes, not through distorted troll insults.”
Stream WALKING BOMBS’ “Mirror Mosh” now at Bandcamp HERE and YouTube HERE.
Blessings Bestrewn Part 1 will be self-released digitally on June 20th. Find preorders HERE.
Additional singles will drop over the weeks ahead.
Blessings Bestrewn Part 1 Track Listing:
1. Mirror Mosh
2. Shitical Darlings
3. The Lonely Petition (Grace Remnants)
4. Sorrowful & Smoke
5. Enby Soul Endogenous
6. Mountain Giantess
7. Lizard Boy
8. Salient: Arbalest Ov Thanx And Sleep
9. Cura Animarum (Pt.1): Inner Child Thrown Down A Well
10. Blessings Bestrewn
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