Black Country, New Road have been anything but stagnant since their 2018-inception. Significant changes across the band’s structure and sound prove the six-piece as masters of adaptability, especially on their 2025 album Forever Howlong. The album simultaneously depicts a departure from their old sound while welcoming a bright, expansive, and experimental path ahead for the group. While 2023’s Live at Bush Hall saw the early stages of a natural evolution for the band, Forever Howlong plunged them right into it.
Lead-vocalist Isaac Wood amicably leaving the band in 2022 threw off the anatomy of BC, NR. In doing so, he provoked a responsibility to the members to carry the band’s name with pride for years to come. Rather than searching for a new lead-vocalist or delegating to one member, Georgia Ellery, Tyler Hyde, May Kershaw, Charlie Wayne, Lewis Evans, and Luke Mark committed to what was already within the band’s means. Dividing vocal responsibilities and picking up recorders reconceptualized the future of Black Country, New Road.
Forever Howlong is just under a year old when Charlie Wayne and I chat over Zoom. BC, NR has spent 2025 touring the album and will continue to do so throughout 2026. After some laughs on the band’s Coachella 2024 performance and Wayne’s excitement to return to Toronto with opener Horsegirl, we reflect on where he stands now with Forever Howlong–and what’s to come as a result of it.
I just interviewed one of the members of deathcrash last week and brought you guys up while talking about the attention on UK bands right now. Have you noticed any significant differences in how the band is received by audiences and industry peers outside of the UK, specifically in North America, versus within the UK?
Playing in the States or North America and playing in England; particularly England is so small, but the audiences are so varied. There is such a difference between playing in Cambridge to playing in Manchester, or Bristol. All three of those places are going to be super different, or playing in Glasgow, even though it’s not part of England. In Scotland, they really go for it. They’re very vocal and they show up. They’re involved the minute you turn up, even though we aren’t a loud band necessarily. We give our all when we’re playing, but not in terms of audience work.
Whereas in Cambridge, it can be quite respectful. [They’re] Sitting and taking it all in–it’s quite difficult to homogenize it. It also depends from festival to festival and who’s going to each festival. We’ve played Glastonbury a couple of times, but people are super keen to go and see lots of different stuff. They cover their weekend based off of what’s on. It can totally change the way your set will hit the audience.
When we first went to America, we were playing a tour with Black Midi and their audiences were crazy. They were quite nice in some ways because during our set they would stand, be respectful, and just listen to the music. When Black Midi came on, they started hitting each other and tearing shit up. But we started going out on our own headline shows and crowds would be super mellow for the entire thing. It’s difficult to draw like blanket statements on audiences that are different wherever you go. Whether it’s Europe or Asia, everywhere’s different. City to city, audience to audience. I always like playing in the States though; I’ve always liked playing in Canada as well. It’s always fun.
Thank God! We’re excited to have you back in June too.
I’m just so glad we’re playing with Horsegirl. They’re good friends of ours and we’ve played a bunch of shows with them; we’ve never played outside of New York with them though. We’ve been trying to get a tour together for such a long time.
That’s going to be awesome. I’m really excited to see both of you play!
Yeah, I loved the album last year they put out so much. I’m looking forward to seeing it.
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Forever Howlong was released just under a year ago. It’s noticeably different from previous work–I think that’s something me and a lot of longtime listeners can agree on. I like to read about how long-time versus newer fans receive an album when it’s been out for a while, and it’s created a bit of a divide there. How aware have you and the band been of those perceptions over the last year? How much space do you give to those perceptions, if any?
When Isaac left the band, we wanted to carry on making music together. We all wanted to keep on using the band name. Isaac had sort of been like “I would like you to carry on as Black Country, New Road,” so it almost gave this duty to keep going under the same auspices of a group of people who’ve been making music for a long time and want to keep putting out albums. Our first and second albums were very different from one another as well. It was always going to be the case that whatever was going to happen was going to be very different.
I think the change is super abrupt for a lot of people. It’s extremely flattering and very meaningful that so many people have found such a connection with the music that you made. Change is also difficult to get on board with, I suppose. If you feel really connected to something, you feel as though that change is hard to come to terms with; or maybe it doesn’t hold the same place artistically as the other. All those things are fair–it’s just people listening to music.
It’s difficult to come to any sort of conclusion as the people doing it, because we all knew that this album was going to be super different anyway. We knew that it was going to be slightly more of an abrupt turn creatively than maybe people were expecting. If we kind of kept the course and tried to make music that we were making beforehand, that would feel both disingenuous, weird, and creatively boring.
People are totally fine to not enjoy whatever we make. You get people who will like this album who maybe haven’t liked the previous two, then we’ll go and make another one, and they might hate that as well. They might think it’s fucking awful because it’s also probably going to be different. We were having a chat and laying some groundwork for what’s coming next, and I don’t imagine it’ll be for a fair while, but it will also be very, very different from what Forever Howlong is. That’s a good thing. I don’t feel as though any of us are interested in retreading.
That is one thing I notice about you guys–you’re never static. That’s the best way to be, while you’re making music. I don’t know anything about making music, I just enjoy it, but I always appreciate seeing people who don’t feel a pressure to stay in one lane. For some people it works to do so, but you guys are constantly evolving out of natural curiosity. That’s part of what makes you guys so special.
We’ve also got the enormous privilege of being in an experimental band and it being our full-time job. That is a crazy thing to be doing. So I don’t think we’re going to be pulling any punches because I want to keep it as a job. You know, it’s amazing and if it lasts, it lasts. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. You have to take the risks while you have the opportunities to.
Absolutely. I do think for the people like myself, and leading up to our chat, I asked a few friends who have been longtime fans of yours about how this album has sat with them over the last year, and what feelings it’s elicited for them. Instrumentally, it felt a lot lighter compared to before and that just contributed to it feeling super optimistic in a way. That was a common feeling listening to this album over the last year. I’m curious, does that resonate with your experience making the album, or how you felt emotionally during that time?
I mean, not necessarily [Laughs].
This is why I ask the questions!
I think what is interesting is that we went from a place of a very high amount of drama, where we’re super arch and very, very emotional. Any other place you go from that is going to kind of feel a little bit like you’re taking your foot off the gas and mellowing out. This album is definitely much more lighthearted and optimistic for sure, but in part that is just sort of trying to tread new ground and make music that felt automatic.
These are the kind of feelings that everyone was having. There’s definitely some pretty sad stuff under the veil of lighthearted harmonies. There’s definitely some whimsy but it’s also pretty full on. Not that you necessarily need to have these dark moments to justify it in retrospects to our previous work. But I agree it does have that veil underneath, especially in certain songs when you hone in on certain messages there.
It was a really hard album to write as well. It’s the first time that maybe we felt there was a bit of pressure to make anything. We knew that we would have to make this album and trying to figure out what it was didn’t come easily, particularly because we were coming at it from three major songwriting angles. Trying to meld it together was difficult, so it took a lot of time, a lot of conversations, and a lot of like quite stressful afternoons, but we found our ground with it. Things started to click slowly.
Everyone in the band experienced these things at different times. Once a month, someone would be like “This is the worst thing I’ve ever heard, let alone made,” and be super unsure about it. It would take everyone else to encourage the other and bring them out of it. Also nothing’s definitive and everything is transitional–this is where we’re at and then we’ll see where we go next. I don’t know where that is yet.
What were you experiencing emotionally at the time of album production and release and where do you find yourself sitting with it now, almost a year later?
We’ve been touring it so much, and I really like touring. I think that actually touring [the album], I find very grounding. It’s a much more comfortable way of engaging with it. Making this definitive thing that’s coming out, I actually find it very uncomfortable. I don’t really like it that much. I don’t think any artist, unless they know they’re onto an absolute peach.
Are you saying when you release an album, that’s the worst part?
Yeah, it’s just the whole run up. I had the same thing with the last album. With the first album, I didn’t worry at all about anything. Because we had never done this before and this might’ve never happened again. It was during COVID. The second album, I was like “People are gonna fucking hate this so much. People are gonna absolutely hate this album, it’s insane that we’re even making this.” The entire time I thought it was really bad. I’ve had that same feeling with everything we’ve done since our first album. It doesn’t leave you, it’s the way it goes.
Other artists I’ve interviewed say the worst part about making music is releasing the music [laughs].
Yeah [laughs], I don’t mind playing the music; it’s just releasing it.
That does perfectly segue into the next thing I wanted to ask. How has your personal relationship to Forever Howlong shifted through playing it live and spending extended time with the songs throughout touring?
We’re kind of in the sweet spot with it at the moment where none of us are necessarily bored of playing the songs, which unfortunately does happen. Or you find yourself playing them automatically rather than with feeling at times, which is not a good place to be in. But I think we’re all still feeling fresh with it and really enjoying playing it to audiences. That’s great. That’s where it should be. It’s nice to vary the set list a little bit. I really like performing.
Do specific songs come to mind when you think of this sweet spot, like which one has been really good lately?
I always like playing ‘Happy Birthday’. That song has always got the peaks and troughs that are very satisfying to play live and see audiences get into it. That and like ‘For the Cold Country’. Also, I oddly like the title track when we play it on the recorder–it’s such a stupid thing to have.
We need to see more people whipping out a recorder. When I was in like sixth grade and we had to take recorder classes for some reason, I was having a damn ball in that class.
That’s so funny. That’s exactly where it was inspired from. We were like “Well, we’ve all played at some point in our lives. We may as well give it another go.” But yeah, it’s really fun. Also, there’s something novel to it. That’s always exciting.
When I was younger, I was big into the Legend of Zelda and I bought an ocarina because of the GameCube game. I would literally just sit in my room, look up how to play songs, and rip shit on the ocarina [laughs]. If you guys ever whipped that out, it’d be the craziest pull of all time.
Exactly [laughs] game changer.
It would really resonate with a super specific group of people on the internet. You’d see someone on the Black Country, New Road Reddit thread screaming about an ocarina on the new record.
When we did our Halloween show, it was our biggest show ever. We were all dressed up and doing spooky song covers. We did the Twin Peaks theme and I’ve literally never seen a crowd go wilder for any music we’ve ever performed.
Oh my god, I can just imagine. Your crowd is the perfect crowd to do that to.
It was quite funny.
I know you guys did the Perfectly Imperfect interview, I’m not sure if you saw but Kyle MacLachlan also did it.
Oh, did he?
Yeah it was the best day of my life. I love reading those interviews so much.
They’re great. I really like them. They’re very funny.
I did want to go back to something we talked about earlier, how you guys aren’t a static band. You’re always evolving. In what ways have you felt that you’ve evolved since the release of Forever Howlong? And I know you already touched on this but I’m gonna reiterate it in a different way; if you could predict it, how do you believe that evolution might manifest into the future of the band?
I feel like whatever we do is always a bit of a reaction after what we’ve done before. We all get bored pretty quickly, musically. Particularly given the way that we tour, where we’re all fairly settled on playing the album most nights and having that be the set of music.
What we might end up doing is some stuff which is a bit less intricate and a bit more rocky; maybe slightly darker. It’s too early to say. We’re going to have some time off.
For sure, for sure.
I’ve got no idea. We got to wait and see what feels inspiring.
I’m curious to hear how that’s going to play out, especially with you saying it might be a bit more scaled back, less intricate.
I know, which obviously is probably much harder to do in practice given how we play music.
If there’s ocarinas involved, it would definitely still be intricate.
It’s true, super heavy ocarina arrangements. This last album was so intricate, ranged, precise and produced that we were all like, ‘Maybe we could do something different this time.’ And by different, maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe not–I’ve got no idea. There are six of us.
And with the six of you, as you mentioned earlier, there was this want to keep the band going under Black Country New Road. What motivates you all to keep coming back together and making music for all these years now?
It’s just a cool job to have, you know, it’s amazing; it’s not boring. We still love playing music with each other, we still like making new music with each other, and we get to do it. We have the luxury of it being an option, which is nuts. That’s not a given at all for most people who want to do music full-time. Significantly, more talented musicians are unable to do it as a full-time job.
We’re still betting. We’re still at the table. We’re still rolling dice. If you have the option to do it, why not? We’re good at making music with each other. It’s a good working relationship. We started rehearsing a couple of days ago again for this tour we’re going on next week, and we’re playing the songs and we’re like, ‘We’re good at playing together, we know how to do it and it’s fun.’ So yeah, why not?
That in itself already kind of answers this, but something I’ve marinated a lot on over the last year, is the idea of personal success versus the standard money, fame, or whatever it is–the external drivers behind it. It sounds to me like what makes you guys feel personally successful is that you just want to keep coming back together to make music. That as long as you’re able to keep doing that, that is success no matter where this band goes, how big it gets, or how small it stays. But to get more of your insight on it, what does success personally feel like for you?
That’s definitely a huge signifier of it for us, the want and the ability to continue, to feel as though there’s still creative ground worth covering, or stuff that still feels interesting to do. I feel very extremely proud of all the things we’ve done, but it feels like there’s a road yet to run, and I don’t feel accomplished necessarily or satisfied yet. That’s also not satisfaction for any one given thing.
You just feel like there’s something still out there.
Exactly, and hopefully that will just keep on running. It’s not even in search of a kind of ‘white whale’ either. It’s just still cool, and there’s still songs to write.
There’s still a lot out there to explore. I asked someone that same question about success and they said they feel successful because they were able to write a song, that they always dreamed of being able to write a song and have written a bunch now. That’s so cool to me.
It is really cool, and it’s not an easy thing to do. I mean I’ve spent hours trying to write anything, just one thing, and it takes forever. I’m always feeling very lucky and slightly in awe of how other songwriters and us all make stuff, it’s kind of like meeting in the middle.
A meeting of the minds of sorts!
A meeting of the minds exactly!
Izzy Petraglia is a publicist, writer and photographer based in Toronto. Within her work, she loves to tie in her passion for music, fashion, and pop culture. Follow her on Instagram.