For about a minute and a half, Chicago trio Oozing Wound rages around in some near-death rattle to begin “Hippie Speedball,” a track off its newly issued Earth Suck. Expertly executed repetitive sections solder the introduction into a longer, six-minute track that eventually skirts the avant-metal implications of its preface, only to fall back into itself for the final minute of the song.
The band, now two full-lengths deep into its career, has and likely will in perpetuity be thought of as a metal band. Taking a listen to anything off that new album or hearing the track Oozing Wound recorded for Adult Swim called “Drug Reference” bears that out. But it’s those verbose and insistent rhythmic repetitions that allude to a spate of influence and intent that sit well beyond the limits of the genre. Sure, Oozing Wound doesn’t always sound too far off from thrash or mid-’80s crossover, but frontman Zack Weil remains confident Oozing Wound is a force unto itself.
Paste: I know you and Kyle [Reynolds, Oozing Wound’s drummer] were in Cacaw a few years back. And that act was at least metal-adjacent, so how is Oozing Wound different?
Zack Weil: That band had so many limitations, self-imposed ones: Everybody had their specific tastes and there were only so many different ways to do something. Carrie [Vinarsky] and Anya [Davidson] were artists, and instruments weren’t their focus.
Paste: Was that band’s intent more serious?
Weil: What’s funny is there were definitely more serious band practices and less fun, but oddly, more focused on having fun at shows. The dichotomy is really weird, because Oozing Wound has always been about rocking out but also about having a fun time. It’s actually the first band I’ve been in that’s been fun. The difference between that and Cacaw—it was like work, but nobody thought it would go anywhere. So, it was very limiting and felt pointless after a while, whereas Oozing Wound is fun for the sake of fun.
Paste: The name of the band and some song titles come off as pretty sarcastic. That might just be the provenance of independent music at this point, but was that tone intended?
Weil: There was a very conscious pulling back on being too funny—we didn’t want to be a joke band. My honest sense of the world has been through very sarcastic sense of humor. I tried to incorporate it into other bands, but I would always get push-back. This one I’m allowed—if I think it’s funny enough or smart enough or stupid, I’ll usually push for it and they go for it. [Song titles] are almost all inside jokes—like “When the Walls Fell,” that’s a Star Trek: The Next Generation reference. It’s all stupid crap.
Paste: The first track off Earth Suck seems pretty serious—“Going Through the Motions Until I Die.”
Weil: A little bit; that was the second one we came up with. Kyle said that one day when he came home from work, and I just thought it was the greatest phrase I’d ever heard. Lyrically, I don’t even say that, it’s just makes sense going with those riffs.