Dull Mourning - Slow Bullet
The hardworking North Carolina loud rockers share on growth, friendship, and their new EP.
“We wanted to write the best songs that we could,” says Jonathan Owens about the nearly three year gap since Dull Mourning’s last release. “We really wanted to make sure that this release was something that truly showcased what Dull Mourning is.”
Don’t mistake that gap for inactivity though. To the contrary, the members of Dull Mourning have been very active over the last few years. In addition to their work in countless other bands, the foursome has ripped through shows in North Carolina and beyond while working on the four songs that make up their newest offering, Slow Bullet, out now on Sunday Drive Records. The EP finds the band growing into their comfort zone by adding a layer of atmospheric guitar leads to their established big-riffing rock sound. Owens, who also plays the bass, has grown as a vocalist in the break as well. His strengthened singing, which is bolstered by harmonies and backups from guitarists Owen Smith and Brandon Archer, is a huge boon to the EP’s moodier and more ethereal moments. All of these elements are held together at the seams by the hard hitting drum performance of Caleb Hogue, one of the underground’s rising drum talents.
The band was formed in the aftermath of emo-rockers Paperback, which featured Owens, Hogue, and Smith. Paperback were road warriors playing shows in clubs, coffee shops, and basements around the eastern half of the country for several years. When the band teetered out, the three set to work on a new batch of songs and decided to crank the amps and tune down the strings as a means to differentiate themselves from their past work. Brandon Archer was brought in to add his take on guitars after his previous band had played with Paperback several times. Their first offering, 2022’s Ugly Flame, was an incendiary slab of pure post-hardcore that saw them playing for wide audiences alongside the heaviest of metallic hardcore bands and the catchiest of rockers alike. Now, as they expand their musical identity, Dull Mourning feels like a band that is fully past any awkward growing pains.
“I think the push forward in sound has just happened naturally,” says Hogue. “We are all involved in so many different styles of music that it’s all bound to seep in at some point.”
“For me, it’s the first band where I’ve been able to write what I want to write without worrying about a genre,” adds Owens.
Opening track “Solid Gospel” rips into its giant opening guitar riff like Vin Diesel stomping on an accelerator in an action movie. Its chorus having no business being as catchy as it is aside, the track at large is a full throttle powerhouse that ends with a heavy bounce that would put most modern hardcore bands on notice. “Slow Bullet” reaches the band's apex for accessible, radio ready alt-rock. The chorus is a sublime swirl of reverb soaked vocal bliss, driving kick drums, and crunchy guitars. After a hectic riff, the bridge comes to a slow crawl before launching into a final chorus that was made for the post-grunge college radio heyday.
Musically, the most obvious touch point for this record is much-lauded Champaign, IL heavy space-rock band Hum. However, Dull Mourning isn’t directly shooting for a shift in sound as much as they’re embracing influences that have been there from the beginning. The guitar tracks have always been driving and densely layered, but now Dull Mourning are going a step further by adding complexity in the form of effects-laden leads all over the track “Drain” and in the intro to “My Own Hell.” The band are not without their peers, as labelmates Glare see their star on the rise and Superheaven have become major players in the loud rock world; but the thing that makes Slow Bullet stand out amongst the crowd is its timelessness. These tracks could have been dropped at basically any point since the late 90’s and wouldn’t have lost any of their edge. If I didn't have the context of what band I was listening to, I wouldn’t have been able to guess when this record was created. That’s what will give the songs legs to stand on for years to come.
Engineered by Carolina mainstay Jeremy White, the EP aptly captures the massive, full sound of its inspirations. The instrumentals sound crisp and clean without sacrificing the edge of putting actual loud amps and drums into a room and using quality microphones to record them. Much like their inspirations in Failure and Hum, the record feels organic and alive; it never comes off as sterile or overly processed. Stepping outside of their routine, the band took their time to make sure the recording did the songs justice. Owens took extra strides to make sure the vocals came out exactly how the band envisioned. The team enlisted Travis Dark, known more for his work with R&B and hip hop singers, to help bring out the best singing performances possible.
“Personally, I hate screaming,” says Owens on how he has found his voice through the last three years of singing live with Dull Mourning. “I wanted the riffs to do more of the movement than the vocals. [...] I like to get in the studio and experiment with melodies and different cadences. [...] If there was anything I didn’t like we changed it. I wasn’t going to be complacent.”
Dull Mourning’s sound is as recognizable as its members, who split their collective time amongst approximately twenty other bands. It’s far too complicated a family tree to draw out here but if you’ve been in a DIY venue in the Southeast over the past few years then the chances are high you’ve seen one of these guys on stage. They’ve contributed to bands as varied as the off-kilter metalcore ragers A Knife In The Dark, the swagger fueled post-punk of Donnie Doolittle, and the fast paced hardcore of Fading Signal. Smith and Hogue even moonlight in their like-minded project Holy Figures. You’d be hard pressed to find a group of musicians who are more dedicated to their craft. They’ve collectively contributed about as much to North Carolina’s booming independent music scene as any band could claim.
“I think that North Carolina in general is a magical place,” says Hogue who spent a significant amount of time in 2024 on the road bashing drums for a litany of bands. “The music scene we have and the people it’s composed of are some of the coolest and most talented around.”
With so much of their time dedicated to various projects it’s difficult to imagine how the members of Dull Mourning manage to make it all work. Unsurprisingly, each member echoed a resounding sentiment that their friendship is the glue that keeps Dull Mourning held together. In fact Owens, Smith, and Hogue have been playing together in different projects for the better part of a decade and don’t have any inclination for that to change.
“It’s safe to say we like to take our time,” says Archer when asked about the logistics of their packed schedules and why they remain dedicated to keeping Dull Mourning on the agenda. “We’ve all known each other forever and these are my best friends. We all collectively care about each other and we get stoked on all the stuff we make. [...] We try to make the most out of everything we do together.”
“To me, Dull Mourning is more about these guys being my family,” adds Hogue. “So much that sometimes the music almost feels secondary. That might sound weird but that is what keeps my heart in this band. I also love the music, don’t get that twisted. [I] just need to put the emphasis on the bond we have.”
With a new year ahead of them the band plans to take these songs on the road as much as possible and reinvigorate their efforts to play shows in the Carolinas. With some of the new songs having already been tested out over the band’s last several shows, Dull Mourning’s status as seasoned and versatile players makes it a certainty that fans will be seeing a band that is both intensely dialed in and carelessly having fun rocking out.
“It also boils down to fun,” says Smith. “[I don’t know] if I have more fun doing anything than when the four of us are in a room together.”
