A Dirty Dozen with CORRIDORÉ – September 2025

Photo credit: Jonathan Ferris B.

According to a recent press release: “Everything Is Noise is currently streaming Abandon, the latest full-length from Madison, Wisconsin-based atmospheric post-black metal conjurors CORRIDORÉ. The premiere comes in advance of the record’s official unveiling on August 22nd via Hypaethral Records. A harrowing and emotionally resonant follow-up to their self-released 2019 debut, Abandon delves deep into themes of isolation, grief, and the fragile resilience of the human spirit. With five sprawling tracks that balance beauty and brutality, Abandon captures the existential tension of life in a collapsing world refusing to look away but still grasping for something beyond despair. Forged in 2016, CORRIDORÉ crafts a sound rooted in the weight and atmosphere of post-metal, filtered through the blistering aggression of black metal and the introspective haze of shoegaze. Drawing comparisons to genre-defying acts like Deafheaven, Falls Of Rauros, Nothing, and Inter Arma, the band uses contrast and dynamic tension to powerful effect moving seamlessly between explosive blast beats, towering tremolo riffs, and moments of stark, melodic stillness.” We get the band to discuss new music, influences, and more…

1. Tell us a little about your latest release.  What might a fan or listener not grab the first or second time they listen through?  Are there any hidden nuggets you put in the material or that only diehard fans might find?

There are a lot of layers. We worked really hard to interweave both guitar parts and vocal lines. We’d like to think that makes the music not only hold up to repeated listens but demands it. If folks take the time to listen to (or read) the lyrics, they’ll find a lot of existential longing. It’s about the fragility of human experience against the backdrop of a cultural wasteland. There are moments of stark despair and glimmers of hope ultimately celebrating the resilience of the human spirit.

2. What got you into music, and can you tell us about the moment you realized you wanted to be a musician?

Russell: As someone who is old as fuck, I remember listening to Jimmy Page and thinking “I want to do that.” [Morgan Freeman voice-over] He never did…

Matt: My dad played guitar in a band when I was young.  When I was five or six years old, I would sit on stage behind the drummer watching the band on stage. It looked like the most fun thing you could possibly do. I started off wanting to be a drummer, but switched to guitar when I was 12 or 13 because I wanted to write songs.

Eric: I also had a band dad and spent many weekends as a kid watching and wanting to emulate that. There were lots of other musicians in my family also, so family reunions usually came complete with jam sessions. I grew up when MTV still had music videos, and like any child of the 80s spent too much time in front of the screen watching all that. I’d take the couch cushions off and spread them around the living room in front of the TV and that was my drumset.

3. Building on that, is there a specific song, album, performer, or live show that guided your musical taste?

Russell: When I discovered Gang of Four, I realized this was music I could make! I began to think about music in a way in which creative and unconventional ideas could be executed with only rudimentary levels of skills. It set me on my path.

Matt: I started playing guitar using Guitar World Magazine tabs in the mid-90’s, but what really shaped my taste was how those power-chord-oriented 90’s grunge songs led me backward to discover their 60’s psych-rock roots. The breakthrough that drove me stylistically was in the late 90’s / early 00’s with bands like Built to Spill, Elliott Smith, and Guided by Voices.

Eric: I was introduced to Jimi Hendrix by an older cousin and it blew my mind.

Nick listened to a lot of soft-rock radio. He made Eric listen to an entire Richard Marx (or was it Heart) album on a car ride through northern Minnesota.

4. If you could call in any one collaborator to do a song with, who would it be, and why?

Russell: Trent Reznor

Matt: Brian Eno

5. What is your favorite activity when out of the studio and/or not on tour?  What do you like to do to unwind?

Russell: Music is really my only thing. Being in the studio or on tour is really the only thing I enjoy. I do like watching fucked-up horror movies though.

Matt: I’m constantly reading – surreal fiction, sci-fi, fantasy – anything that takes me to completely different worlds. I’m also always listening to music from all kinds of genres: indie, folk, alt-country, ambient, electronic, cosmic jazz. I feel like that combination of heady literature and diverse musical influences keeps me inspired to create things I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.

Eric and Nick share dumb memes.

6. How would you describe your music to someone who’d never listened to you before? What is the one comparison a reviewer or fan has made that made you cringe or you disagreed with?

We usually say atmospheric black metal, but yeah, normies will absolutely still glaze over at that. It’s metal, but not Metallica; post-rock but not Explosions In The Sky; shoegaze but not MBV. (And there’s lots of blast beats, tremolo picking and screaming.) Someone once said we sound like the experimental moments of Converge which we don’t get at all?!?!?

7. When your band is hanging out together, who cooks, who gets the drinks in, and who is first to crack out the acoustic guitars for a singalong?

We get take out, Nick or Russell brings the beer, and Matt would absolutely strum the acoustic.

8. When was the last time you were starstruck and who was it?

Russell: After David Bazan (Pedro the Lion) played an acoustic house show, I tried to tell him about a song we were writing that had a “Bazan part.” He graciously said he wanted to hear it and I promised to send it to him. [Morgan Freeman voice-over] He never did…

Matt: Ryan Davis. He’s my favorite songwriter of the past decade, and meeting him twice this year left me refreshed and motivated to make music. There’s something about encountering someone whose work has genuinely shaped how you think about songwriting – suddenly you’re just a fan trying to play it cool.

9. What is the best part of being a musician? If you could no longer be a musician for whatever reason, what would be your dream job?

Russell: I very much doubt being a musician will ever be a job. The music I like and make is wayyyy too niche to support myself. I have long thought that I should have been an electrician.

Matt: Anything in the creative arts would be a dream job, whether it be music, film, or literature.

Eric: I think I’d be afraid of making music my full time job or my source of income I’m depending on.  The best part of being a musician is having a creative outlet to pour yourself into; it’s even better when you have people to share that experience with and actually create stuff that we think sounds good.

10. What is one question you have always wanted an interviewer to ask – and what is the answer? Conversely, what question are you tired of answering?

Wired: Love the nerdy gear questions like what’s on your pedal board? Or how’d you get that sound? Tired: Describe your music.

11. Looking back over your career, is there a single moment or situation you feel was a misstep or you would like to have a “do over,” even if it didn’t change your current situation?

Russell: I should have toured earlier and more often. Also, in the 90’s I was in NYC visiting and saw a flier for a band I really liked, Band of Susans, who were looking for a guitarist. To this day I regret not calling for an audition.

Matt: I wish I’d been more relentless about pursuing music as a career right after college. I went straight into a full-time job, and life just took over from there. Looking back, I should have taken bigger risks – maybe moved to a coast, figured out how to build a life that could actually be sustained by artistic work instead of treating music as something that had to fit around everything else.

Eric: Same as Matt’s answer 🙂

12. If you could magically go back in time and be a part of the recording sessions for any one record in history, which would you choose – and what does that record mean to you?

Russell: Entroducing by DJ Shadow. Sample-based recontextualizing was perfected and remains unassailable to this day. The pinnacle of instrumental hip-hop.

Matt: Low by Bowie. That album completely rewired my understanding of what pop music could be – half fractured art-rock songs, half ambient instrumentals that sound like transmissions from another planet. Being there for those Berlin sessions with Eno would be like witnessing the birth of a whole new musical language.

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Category: Interviews