Netherwilds

Netherwilds is the medieval metal project of Toronto's David Monks, who spent a decade fronting the indie rock band Tokyo Police Club before reappearing in mud and tattered wool as a peasant named Worm Chewer. What started as a short-form video character, much of it filmed in the Irish countryside, grew into a full band and a serialized fantasy about a serf who loses his goat and finds a revolution instead. The sound the group calls peasant metal runs black metal tremolo and thrash speed straight into hurdy-gurdy, mandolin and bouzouki, produced and mixed by Jesse Turnbull. Their debut album, Peasant Rising, arrives October 9 via King Volume Records, preceded by the singles "Return the Goat" and "Siege Proof Hovel." The costumes are absurd. The class resentment underneath them is not.