WALL are an instrumental 2-piece heavy fucking riff machine, built brick by brick & riff by riff by twin brothers and Desert Storm members Ryan & Elliot Cole. Like many recent projects WALL was born during the Covid lockdown with the two brothers living together in a small flat. With both of them furloughed, this left the duo with little else to do but write music to distract themselves from the boredom of being stuck at home.
Ryan wrote riffs on an unplugged Gibson SG, whilst Elliot tapped out the drum rhythms on his lap. The first time the twins heard how the songs would sound properly was when they were in the studio tracking their initial first two EPs, as they couldn’t arrange a proper rehearsal due to restrictions.
While originally starting out as a side project, WALL began to evolve into a more serious proposition following shows at Bloodstock Open Air, Desertfest London, Masters of the Riff alongside shows with Discharge, Will Haven and European dates in Germany, Czech Rep & Slovakia.
On 30th August their debut full-length album Brick By Brick will be released through APF Records (Desert Storm, Video Nasties, Barbarian Hermit), which is overflowing with unashamed Iommi-worshipping, instrumental, sludge/doom metal. The album is available for pre-order through here. In the meantime Ryan spoke to Echoes and Dust about 3 releases that have played a huge influence on the WALL sound…
Black Sabbath – Paranoid
We are both huge Black Sabbath fans, and the first 6 Sabbath albums are just essential listening. Paranoid has to be the most important for us though simply as it’s the first record we heard….both 8 years old sat in the back of Mum and Dad’s Fiat Uno in a Budgens carpark, and Dad had the Paranoid album on Cassette….I just remember hearing that main riff to ‘Iron Man’ and us both being blown away saying ‘what is this!?!?’ Later that year for Christmas we both got the Paranoid CD.
The whole album is absolutely killer, just so many phenomenal riffs (the riff in the bridge of ‘War Pigs’ at 6 mins 35 is one of my all time favourite riffs), great lyrics and vocal hooks, fantastic drumming from Bill (‘RAT SALAD’!) and Geezers sublime bass runs, there are not many albums that get a 10/10 but this does. During the covid pandemic when I was in lockdown, I spent time learning most of the riffs and solos on that album… just so much fun!
Karma To Burn – Almost Heathen
As an instrumental stoner metal riff rock band ourselves, we couldn’t have not included the instrumental stoner rock kings – Karma To Burn. We’ve known these guys a long time from our other band Desert Storm touring multiple times around the UK & Europe with them. We first heard of them from Matt (from Desert Storm) having some of their tracks on his iPod. After getting into them we saw they were touring with Monster Magnet in 2010, we attended their show in Leamington spa and chatted to Rich Mullins. The guys checked us out and had us out with them from 2012 right up until their last UK tour in 2018. Unfortunately Will Mecum passed away a few years ago now, which was really upsetting, he was a great dude, and we have many fond memories rocking and drinking with that dude.
As for this album, its a pure riff fest, and Rob Oswald’s drumming is as impressive as ever. We cover ’19’ on our album as a tribute to them. The band will be sorely missed but we are grateful for the music they have left behind. Karma To Burn rule!
Metallica – Metallica (The Black Album)
When I look back at my early teenage years, when I first started learning the guitar, Metallica are up there as one of my top influences. I had guitar lessons for a year or so when I was 14 and I had the tab book for this album. Half the lesson was learning theory and the 2nd half, a song of my choice, which started with ‘Enter Sandman’, then ‘Nothing Else Matters’ and a few others!
I remember when I first heard this album, Me, Elliot and our Dad went to watch Oxford United, and to avoid parking at the Kassam Stadium we used to park at Dad’s friend’s house (Disco Dave..the legend that is) and he has a huge impressive cd collection and we used to borrow different band CDs (this was the main way we discovered so many bands back in the day before Spotify!). I got home and put on the Black Album, and those riffs of ‘Enter Sandman’ and then into ‘Sad But True’, are incredible. I remember shouting down the stairs ‘Elliot, come up here NOW! Listen to this!’ …. just amazing the black album gets stick from the old school thrash fans, I love the thrash era too, and I’m probably more into that stuff now, but The Black Album is great and is the reason we’re Metallica fans.
