October 31st was the perfect drop day for a record that sounds like it was recorded in a haunted cabin deep in the woods. Until They Burn Me just unleashed “coven“, a six-track EP that doesn’t just flirt with the occult—it crawls inside it and locks the door. This isn’t a gimmick. It’s a dark, sprawling ride through bad omens, desperate love, and folklore that sticks to your ribs.
Let’s get the crew straight. This is the brainchild of Cody Carlyle, Travis Jordan, and Travis Martin. Carlyle and Jordan aren’t just casual bandmates; their musical history stretches back over 35 years to their days in The Dry Season. That kind of shared history builds a telepathy that you can’t fake. They’re both songwriters, vocalists, and multi-instrumentalists, and they put this whole thing together across a massive distance—bouncing files between home studios in Ferndale, Washington, and Cincinnati, Ohio. The fact that it sounds this cohesive, this locked-in, despite the miles between them, is a serious flex. They know exactly how to follow the music wherever it wants to go.
And where it goes is all over the map. The band refuses to be boxed in. You’ll get a heavy dose of Americana and dark country, but then the bottom drops out into gritty folk, swampy blues, and straight-up rock. It’s the kind of record that makes you want to light a bonfire and tell ghost stories.
The glue holding this whole sinister package together is witchcraft. But it’s not a cheesy, pointy-hat stereotype. It’s a recurring theme that shifts shape. The EP kicks off with “Charlotte and the Witch“, a track about unrequited love that gets so desperate someone goes looking for a supernatural cheat code. It’s tense and moody. Then “Blackbird” swoops in with a bluesy, heavy groove. It taps into that ancient human paranoia—seeing a bird in the sky and feeling like the universe is trying to send you a warning.
Right in the middle, they drop “Bedbugs“. It’s an instrumental interlude, and it’s brilliant. It doesn’t give you any answers, just pure, creeping atmosphere. It makes you feel like something is hiding just out of sight, waiting for the lights to go off.
From there, the record dives deeper into the shadows. “Leechcraft“, “Long Meg“, and “Sister Midnight” keep the fire burning. Each track adds another layer to this shadowy world. Are these forces genuinely supernatural, or are they just psychological demons? The record leaves it uncomfortably ambiguous, and that’s exactly why it works. It’s less like a traditional concept album and more like a collection of dark tales gathered around the same fire.
This EP is just the latest chapter for a band that is getting harder and harder to categorize. Following up 2024’s Mud Music, 2025’s A Carnival of Reveries, and recent singles like “Dead Water and the Seeds of Despair” and “Addict“, “coven” shows a band completely comfortable in their own weird skin.