Wayfarer

Wayfarer was formed in 2011 when Shane McCarthy and Tanner Rezabek decided they wanted to play black metal grounded primarily in the history of the U.S. Today the band finds themselves far from where they started, at a wholly different place than what their beginnings would suggest.

Initially, Wayfarer played atmospheric black metal with majestic melodies, but not yet those layered with the Americana as their stylistic building block. What’s more, their first demo was purely instrumental.

A major change came with their debut album, “Children of the Iron Age”, with which the band boldly infused their melodic black metal tissue with the foreign bodies of folk music. The 2018 “World’s Blood”, however, turned out to be the real breakthrough, with Wayfarer truly coming into their own. Critics and fans alike were quick to appreciate the unorthodox mix of influences, which enriched the extreme grounds with peculiar gothic country and Americana.

The band didn’t stop there, with the 2020 A Romance with Violence and the 2023 “American Gothic” attesting to their going steady with the idiosyncratic style.