Bask Take Americana to Heavy New Dimension on The Turning
Posted on August 21, 2025
More information about The Turning
Ever since they came rumbling down from the Blue Ridge Mountains, Bask have sounded of their very own time and place. The climb to reach album number four ended up taking these Southern trailblazers on one hell of a trip. But on The Turning, the band take their homebrewed Heavy Americana to a whole new dimension.
“The album is passionate, soul searching, driven with purpose and a sense of adventure that doesn’t involve pointless wandering”, Blabbermouth writes about The Turning in a 8/10 review. “Sure, influences can be heard, assumed and even self-professed, but as a collective, Bask doesn’t rip off any band, subgenre nor style. The Turning is a true exploration of sound, story and self”.
“The Turning is an emotionally charged record of the highest order with Bask firmly establishing themselves as one of the most unique and original voices within the modern day Psych Stoner Rock / Metal scene”, writes Outlaws of the Sun. “This is a record of real quality and can easily be considered of the best Psychedelic Rock albums of the year”.
The Turning comes out tomorrow, Friday, August 22 on Season of Mist, but you can hear all eight lush and roaming songs today by listening to the full album stream on the Season of Mist YouTube channel.
Listen to The Turning
https://youtu.be/3oHOsCRaCf8
Pre-order & Pre-save
https://orcd.co/basktheturning
Bask are ringing in this heavy and heady frontier on their current tour of the East Coast. Hear them perform songs off The Turning during the album’s opening run out on the road.
The Turning 2025 East Coast Tour
August 21 – Savannah, GA @ El Rocko [TICKETS]
August 22 – Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel [TICKETS]
August 23 – Raleigh, NC @ Chapel of Bones [TICKETS]
August 24 – Richmond, VA @ Fuzzy Cactus [TICKETS]
August 26 – Philadelphia, PA @ MilkBoy [TICKETS]
August 28 – Searsport, ME @ Starboard Lounge [TICKETS]
August 29 – Providence, RI @ Parlour [TICKETS]
August 30 – Wallingford, CT @ Cherry Street Station [TICKETS]
August 31 – Boston, MA @ O’Briens [TICKETS]
Bask remain grounded in the natural-born sounds of Appalachia, but The Turning truly straddles the fence between cosmic and country. “When we started writing this album, the songs were twangy but also spacier and more psychedelic than anything we’ve done before”, vocalist and guitarist Zeb Wright says. Though already in the band’s orbit, this is their first album to welcome Jed Willis as an official member. Lead single “Dig My Heels” starts with its boots firmly planted in rugged pastures before bounding for the great beyond, where Willis’ pedal steel swirls like all the colors of the Milky Way.
“These guys have become friends and brothers to me over the past decade or so”, Willis says. “Our music journeys have become intertwined, creating a solid and welcoming foundation that made my transition into the band feel like a natural next step for all of us”.
The Turning doesn’t just span genres. The album stretches across generations in man’s never-ending quest for immortality. Its spurred heroine, known simply as The Rider, has her extraterrestrial world turned upside down by “The Traveler”, a mysteriously ageless gunslinger, who arrives armed with a double-barreled riff atop galloping drums. Maze-like twists are revealed at every self-referential turn as the star-crossed outlaws try and outrun the changing of the seasons. But while out of this world, the dwellings on family, aging, death and rebirth hit close to home.
“We’ve been through so much together. We were robbed in Sweden. A tire literally fell off our van while we were driving”, bassist Jesse Van Note reflects. “Because of COVID, we didn’t get together as much, either. We’re also older now and there are challenges and responsibilities that come with that. I have two kids. Some of us have bought houses. We’ve all been through marriages and different relationships. For things to snowball on top of the band one after another, it kind of had us feeling like maybe this was the end of our era”.
The Turning was almost lost to the sands of time. Bask finished tracking the album just a few weeks before Hurricane Helene reached Asheville. “It was terrifying”, remembers guitarist Ray Worth. “We had a hard time getting in touch with each other. I climbed a hill to get cell phone reception. One of the guys was still unaccounted for the day before we were supposed to leave for Europe”. With a wearisome gait, “Long Lost Light” drifts through a ghost town haunted by salooning piano and high, lonesome fiddle, until it’s swept like sawdust into the void.
But just as the album’s heroine discovers her hidden powers, the title track ends with the newly mounted five-piece stampeding toward the next frontier. “I danced through age and fire“, Wright belts, backed by everything Bask stand for: mountainous bass, tumbling drums, blazing leads and sunbursts of pedal steel.
“COVID, Hurricane Helene and just life in general threw much instability at us, but I think the resilience of the band and our music shines through”, drummer Scott Middleton says. “It’s been a challenging five years, but I think we did a good job weathering the storm and expanding our sound on The Turning“.
More praise for Bask
“Every song, from the layers of sound melting into waves of reverb on ‘The Cloth’ to gospel roots that spring from the chaos of the closing title track bring The Turning higher and higher as a cohesive statement of love, identity, and place. I can’t believe how quickly this album took a hold of me, and how much it spoke to the thing I’ve been looking for in music these past few heavy and hard months” – Nine Circles
“In addition to the ambitious storytelling, the LP finds the group leaning further into the folk and bluegrass traditions that its members grew up around, enhancing their trademark heavy sounds in exciting ways” – Mountain Xpress
“The Turning is a stained-glass kaleidoscope of Appalachian grit colliding with cosmic psychedelia. A heavy Americana concept album that refuses boxes. The band stares down calamity and distills it into deep sonic gold” – Metal Lair“What we have in The Turning is the most cohesive, most emotionally stripped to the bare bones of its creators, yet most flourishing album certainly to come from Bask thus far, but also to come from this strange genre-less corner of heavy music in some time” – Wormwood Chronicles
“This is an album for the ages” – Stoner Hive
“I’ve heard the components of Bask’s music before: Baroness, U.S. Christmas, Bruce Springsteen, Crazy Horse, Across Tundras and so forth. But I’ve never heard them together as one unit. If someone were to ask me if it were possible to be heavy without being brutal, I’d refer them to Bask”
– Invisible Oranges. “Bask simply executes on a whole other level than their peers” – Metal Injection
“Such a knack for expressive music is Bask’s bread and butter” – Angry Metal Guy
“This is the kind of band you want to see grow. Join the party now” – Heavy Blog is Heavy
“The entire thing rocks your socks off with gripping guitar riffing” – Metal Bite
“…undeniably both infection and innovative” – Metal Storm
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