LITURGY OF ASH

LITURGY OF ASH is the record I've been circling for a year. Every Smoke-Oh release before this one taught me something about where the violin sits in a metal arrangement — and this album is me finally committing to the answer: the violin leads, the band follows, and nothing on the record is decoration.

“Each track is built like a ceremony — a quiet, almost liturgical opening, then the slow build, then the burn.”

The idea behind the title is ritual. Each track is built like a ceremony — a quiet, almost liturgical opening, then the slow build, then the burn. I wanted the dynamic range of a film score with the weight of a metalcore record, so the violin spends a lot of this album alone and exposed before the full band crashes in. When the distortion finally lands, it lands harder because you've been sitting in the silence with a single string.

Sonically this is the heaviest, most cinematic thing I've put out. The guitars are tuned low and sit right on your chest, the drums are dry and close, and the violin is recorded hot and forward — no hiding behind reverb. There are moments here that started as solo violin sketches at 2am and ended up as full orchestral storms. That gap between the whisper and the roar is the whole point of the album.

If you're new to Smoke-Oh, LITURGY OF ASH is a good place to start — it's the clearest statement of what Violincore is: instrumental violin metal that tells a story without a single lyric. If you've been here since the early singles, this is the record those songs were building toward. Out July 3, 2026. Put it on loud.