Cwfen: “I have no interest in being some ‘sexy’ frontperson. I’d much rather be seen as horrifying”

Mercurial black magic pulsates deep at the heart of Cwfen. Part band, part force of nature born from the desolation and darkness of the Scottish wilds, it’s there in their compelling blend of doom metal, post-punk and goth rock. It emanates from a live show that’s far more like a ‘ritual’ than those from other bands appropriating that term. And, in some chaotic alternative universe, it could have seen them going by the name ‘Bog Slut’ instead.

“We’re Patreon subscribers to [Darkthrone legend] Fenriz’ podcast,” laughs guitarist Guy deNuit. “One evening during lockdown, after a few glasses of wine, we began to think about how we could get featured. Later that night, we were watching an episode of Vikings which featured a seer rolling around in the mud. Someone just remarked, ‘Who’s this bog slut?!’”

“Immediately,” grins vocalist Agnes Alder, “I said, ‘That’s our Radio Fenriz band name!’”

Amusing – and weirdly fitting – as that moniker would’ve been, ‘Cwfen’ is a damn sight better. After endless agonising, Agnes was inspired by a visit to the 1500-year-old Govan Stones in Glasgow and being reminded of ancient connections between ancient Wales and Strathclyde in the west of Scotland. There are already a bunch of bands called ‘Coven’, but the Welsh ‘Cwfen’ – pronounced the same – possessed even deeper meaning.

“We had a fortuitous meeting with the curator of the pagan burial site at Old Govan Church,” Agnes expands. “He explained that prehistoric people right up the west coast spoke Old Cumbric. Coven was the first word I looked up to translate. In the Anglosphere it feels like all of the UK gets reduced to English culture. But there are so many stories, deep tragedies and landscapes in the Celtic peripheries. This felt like a way to honour that.”

It was a way to hark back to the history and persecution of witches in ancient Scotland, too.

“It’s in vogue to be ‘witchy’ now,” Agnes continues. “But the people persecuted in the witch trials weren’t magic – they were just women who asked questions, like midwives or those who practiced herbal medicine. I felt connected to that as an outsider, as someone with a reverence for nature, as a queer woman, as a person who’s [grappled with] mental health. Back then I could’ve so easily ended up being burned at the stake. We all would’ve.”

That connection to their Caledonian homeland is absolutely pivotal. Drummer Rös Ranquinn was Guy’s first friend at high school in the village of Darvel down Scotland’s scenic west coast.

“He’s got some stories to tell,” Guy laughs. “Like the time he opened for Metallica in the Stade de France when he was playing for [indie-rock darlings] The Kills.”

Bassist Mary Thomas Baker had also shared stages with Guy before, and joined the pair for a previous post-black metal outfit in the mid-2010s. Three years ago now, Agnes sent Guy some darkwave demos she’d been working on to expunge the misery of COVID, and their criss-crossing paths and layers upon layers of shared history converged in what would become Cwfen.

“Scotland is a village, especially when it comes to the heavy music scene,” Agnes says. “What’s cool about this band is all our interlinking [musical histories]. It was never meant to be a ‘cool’ band. It was just something for ourselves at this particular point in our lives.”

Name-checking fellow rising stars of the Scottish alternative scene like Mrs Frighthouse, All Men Unto Me and Coffin Mulch, they’re products of a broader creative stirring north of The Wall. But as their message has spread it’s clear they’re part of something even bigger.

“We are an antifascist, LGBTQ+ positive, safe space band,” Guy says unequivocally.

Indeed, debut LP Sorrows is full of stories that underline that message. Embers, for instance, is a queer love story. Rite, meanwhile, (‘Time for the rite to die’) is a triple-barrelled pun on witchcraft, assisted dying and a need to correct modern politics’ neo-conservative shift.

“I seriously thought about calling the album Laments,” explains Agnes. “Every song is about a deeper response, beyond sadness, to something going on around us. That might be to things we see going on in society. It could be about being a queer woman. It could be any different thing. Irish keening – the culturally important act of vocally lamenting as part of the communal mourning process – was a touchpoint, and the second ‘Fragment’ on the album is a distorted version of one of the earliest recordings of keening. It’s how women showed up. It’s how we respond to all these fucked up things. We sing.”

Although that embrace of a darker, more fearsome femininity chimes with contemporaries like Chelsea Wolfe or A.A. Williams, Agnes’ is rooted in personal experience.

“When I was in my 20s, I was in a band where I was referred to as ‘The Skirt’,” she remembers. “Eventually I got kicked out for shaving my head and refusing to wear a dress. I have no interest in being some ‘sexy’ frontperson. I’d much rather be seen as horrifying.”

A few years back, Kerrang! ran a list of the ‘13 bleakest albums ever’. Cwfen laugh that it reads like a playlist of the music they grew up listening to: Killing Joke, Type O Negative, Warning’s none-more-miserable Watching From A Distance. “It’s like you’d tapped into the DNA of this band,” Agnes observes.

In truth, their influences are far broader than that. Although not religious, both Agnes and Guy first performed as part of church choirs and both are deeply fascinated by the power of the human voice.

Agnes had been in grunge, post-punk and riot grrrl bands, and had dabbled in darkwave. But she’d never been in a metal band before. She’d never been the singer, either, having always previously played guitar. So seeing several of the songs on Sorrows recorded in one take (lead single Reliks was done before a videographer friend in the studio even had time to set up a second camera) was an invigorating affirmation of how right it all felt.

“It was about realising the magic of imperfection,” she enthuses. “I love electronica, but it tickles a different part of the brain to these very raw, very emotional, very human sounds.”

“It became about asking how far you can push a melody into the void before it gets lost,” Guy expands of songs as deep and dark as Whispers and Wolfsbane. “How loud and dirty could we sound? How much reverb can you add without losing the sense of impact?”

Goth is the other their other great touchpoint. Although the term was a teenage insult for kids growing up in Scotland’s central belt aimed at everyone from fans of Slipknot to those of Siouxsie And The Banshees, it still raises a smile.

“Goth has always been the writing running through the stick of rock that is my life,” Agnes admits. “I might not be doing old-school Siouxsie Sioux make-up anymore, but it’s still there. In my ‘real life’ I’m a designer, and a lot of the influence comes from art, architecture and costume design.

“There’s a lot of Celtic history in there, too, as someone with both Scottish and Irish ancestry. In pre-Christian times we painted ourselves in woad and the make-up I wear onstage is a pot of black ink smeared on – very different from the precision of the look I have in my day-to-day life. It’s feral. It’s all sort of morphed out of that. When I step onstage my body makes sounds and I find myself doing things I never otherwise would.”

“It’s like a switch being flipped,” Guy agrees with a smile. “It’s like you’re possessed!”

That otherworldly power only grows as time goes on. Starting out, if you’d asked Agnes or Guy, Mary or Rös what their ambitions were just a couple of years ago, the answers would have been simple: releasing a vinyl and playing shows outside the UK with music that they wrote themselves. But getting out there and finding a fanbase – many of whom are already saying Cwfen’s music changed their lives – has shifted priorities.

“We didn’t start this with any pretentions of trying to find an audience,” Guy nods. “They found us. And because of that, it feels like we owe them something. It’s a transactional relationship. And delivering on that is about our four parts in perfect balance. Half of us are about what this all means. Then the other half are about how hard we can hit you with it.”

“Music truly does feel like a form of magic to me,” Agnes concludes. “It feels like a form of worship. Nothing can impact your feelings or how you experience things in the way that music does. It’s just so profound. To me, that power is almost elemental.”

Sorrows is out now via New Heavy Sounds

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