Two summers ago, local post-hardcore group Edhochuli were stuck in Miami. In the midst of a five-week tour, their van was sputtering, and, of course, there were many more shows to play.
Most importantly, the band was recording their fourth album, Higherlander, which was finally released earlier this month. Powered by a new and improved five-piece lineup, Edhochuli’s first record since 2015 is centered around bruising, melodic guitar parts, Jon Ahn’s vicious vocals, and devastating, brutal lyricism — right in the band’s sweet spot.
“This is like the longest we ever spent writing anything. Back in the day, we would just write a song and be like, ‘it's done, let's go on tour,’” says Ahn, the group’s bassist/vocalist. “These days, we’ll put it on the back burner, sit on a song for a second, then come back to it and like, ‘Alright, what are your feelings about it? Let’s play this again.’”
Named for retired NFL referee Ed Hochuli, the Pittsburgh quintet has been thrashing around the city for over fifteen years now. Their first show was on New Year's Day in 2009, at a house on Oakland’s steep Chesterfield Road, with a debut release soon to follow.
“Technically, we started it like five years before that, but it was really casual. It was kind of a free-time activity,” says guitarist Dave Rath. “We eventually burned a bunch of CDs and put them in little paper folders that we had printed ourselves. And then we went everywhere [on tour] with that for like six years.”
Constant touring became the regular for Edhochuli, blazing across the country behind albums like 2013’s Edhochuli and 2015’s Dream Warriors. But years of live shows created exhaustion in the band, leading to drummer Ben Jones needing a break.
“We hit the road pretty hard for like two years, basically, after Dream Warriors. Long story short, Ben got burnt out on a lot of stuff ... He was like, ‘Yo I gotta chill out for a bit, I gotta get my life together and whatnot,’” explains Ahn. “So, I called Dave Varney and I was like, ‘I know you're moving back up here pretty soon and Ben is kind of dipping out for a little bit. Do you want to play drums for us?’”
A bit after Varney’s first long tour with the group got canceled in March 2020, Jones called up Ahn and proposed that they jam as a group again. The end result is Higherlander — the band’s first album with both drummers onboard.
“Ben ended up moving back up to Pittsburgh, and then we went pretty hard on it. We started writing this new record, and it took a while, like all Edhochuli songs do,” laughs Ahn.
Occasionally pegged as punk’s Thin Lizzy or The Allman Brothers Band, Edhochuli’s writing process starts from jam sessions and coheres into harmonized, highly organized grooves. With both Jones and Varney drumming, each member proposed different parts they had worked on separately, often with Ahn arranging pieces into the group’s regularly longer-than-six-minute songs.
“[Guitarist Garrett Cassidy], he’s a riff machine. Sometimes Garrett is even late to practice because he['s] sitting at home, playing guitar, and then loses track of time,” says Ahn.
Before they ventured down to Miami, the members started brainstorming who would fit as engineer to help create a bigger, bolder Edhochuli record. By sheer luck, Jonathan Nuñez of Florida sludge metal band Torche reached out.
“It was really serendipitous. I remember I was walking to work one day and Jon Nuñez hit me up, was like, ‘Hey, I saw your AutoTree [live session], I would love to work with you sometime,’” says Ahn. “I said like, ‘That’s crazy because I was going to message you and see if you’d be into it.’ So, we routed this tour to go down to Miami and spent maybe eight days with Jon.”
With van troubles, two drummers, and only a short period of time, the recording was a trying experience, even with Nuñez’s supportive, excellent engineering work.
“It was grueling because there wasn’t really any place else to go,” added Rath. “The control room, with six people in it, is incredibly crowded. The only other place you could go is outside, where it was like 98 degrees or hotter all the time. No shade.”
On Feb. 12, Higherlander finally arrived, complete with Ahn’s growling, Cassidy’s emboldened guitar riffs, and the slow crescendo of “Only Time Will Tell if We Stand the Test of Time,” one of the group’s best songs yet.
To celebrate, Edhochuli headlines Lawrencville’s Brillobox on Thurs., Feb. 29, with a lineup of old friends like Gnarwhal and Old Accusers, before heading off to tour for a month. But while they’re looking forward to playing material off of Higherlander, Edhochuli looks forward to reconnecting with the friends made around the country over the 15 years of being a band.
“I’m looking forward to seeing all of our friends that we don’t get to see when we’re staying at home, going to work, and whatnot,” says Rath. “Excited to see our homies for six to 12 hours at a time and then moving on to another spot.”
“It’s gonna be a lot of different feelings but all positive,” says Ahn. “I’ll probably cry a couple times or whatever, just from pure happiness.”
Edhochuli get ready to sweat it out touring their first album in nine years
