Yob brings cold comfort to a dark world
Bassist Aaron Rieseberg on finding power and peace through metal
Somehow, during my interview with Yob bassist Aaron Rieseberg, the conversation turns to Red Hot Chili Peppers.
“I put on Blood Sugar Sex Magik the other day and it was like, oh yeah, some of this stuff...” Rieseberg trails off, wistfully. ”That rhythm section is undeniable.”
For those familiar with Yob’s music, Rieseberg’s admiration for SoCal’s perennial favorite band may come as a shock, because on paper, Yob and Red Hot Chili Peppers could not be further apart. For one, Yob play doom metal, a subgenre characterized by pitch-black tritones, droning riffs, and a heaviness that can only be described as bulldozing. Even within the metal category, it’s a bit of an outlier; it’s typically not the type of metal that heshers mosh to. Doom metal is for those who want to retreat into themselves and/or experience some hypnotic state of dark enlightenment (it’s no wonder that doom metal often bleeds into the stoner genre). Simply, Yob’s music is far from the fun-in-the-sun, raunchy funboi style for which RHCP are known.
Those who are even a little familiar with Yob, the unexpected inspiration shouldn’t be surprising. Their sound pulls from wildly diverse inspirations, creating a monster that’s difficult to categorize, so it’s really no wonder why they’ve been metal pioneers for over 20 years. Just watch this video of singer/guitarist Mike Scheidt talking about the wide range of music that influences Yob’s sound, including country and, specifically, Townes Van Zandt’s Americana-defining style of finger-picking.
But what’s most surprising about Yob, perhaps, is their vulnerability. For a band that peddles in doom, their music teems with sadness, hope, and even spirituality. The lyric content of their last album—2018’s opus Our Raw Heart—drew heavily from the lead singer’s much-documented near-death experience, but the music feels like the equivalent to Caspar David Friedrich’s famous painting, “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog,” where beauty, terror, and possibility of succumbing to the elements all exist in the same moment. Take the album’s opener, “Ablaze”, for example: after a minute intro of war-like rallying, the song transforms into one the genre’s heaviest dirges—complete with a bone-shaking bassline bolstering a guitar tone that, honestly, sounds frightened. For sure, there are savage moments in Yob’s music, but it’s the vulnerability that holds listeners.
“I’m a pretty happy person, but I'm drawn to a lot of the dark,” Rieseberg says. “It just always gives me a feeling of comfort. Just like with living in the Northwest, and being in such a gloomy environment—It evokes something in me when I hear dark music.”
For Rieseberg, growing up in the Pacific Northwest—Albany, Oregon, to be specific—had a direct impact on his relationship to darkness. First of all, it’s Oregon. It’s impossible not to let the dour weather and thick Nordic-esque forests influence your art. Add to that the feeling of being an outsider—in this case, a metalhead—in a small town, and that’s just a recipe for darkness.
“There wasn't a lot to do in Albany if you're a kid. A lot of our friends, they all played music. We did that a lot. We got in trouble a lot, just doing all kinds of wacky things you do when you're a teenager.”
Rieseberg’s journey toward metal ascension (or descension, depending how \m/ evil \m/ you are) began when he was 14. It was at this age that met Travis Foster, Yob’s current drummer and who was already playing in local bands. For Rieseberg, who’d spent the previous unfruitful years practicing bass, this burgeoning friendship provided his first exposure to the feeling of creating music with another human.
“I'd go to their band practices and hang out,” Rieseberg says. “One day, their bass player was like, ‘feel free to play.’ That was the first time I played music with anybody. Just that initial connection with playing with a drummer, where you're like playing together and locking in—that was a monumental moment for me. It lit a fire.”
When asked if he remembers what type of music they played, Rieseberg laughs.
“Oh man, I couldn't even tell you. I was really into Sepultura. Metallica. Type O Negative—”
“So probably something heavy?” I ask.
“Yeah, something heavy,” he pauses. “But weak at the same time. Weaksauce heavy shit.”
Travis eventually joined Yob, drumming alongside Mike Scheidt and then-bassist Isamu Sato. And since metalheads in small towns have to stick together, Rieseberg—who considered himself a “big fan”—went to every Yob show he could, and consistently hung out with them during their practices.
Then in 2005, Yob took a three-year hiatus, and when they reformed, they realized they had a hole to fill.
“Isamu had other things going on,” Rieseberg says. “So [Yob] started auditioning people. And Travis called me one day—I was working at the grocery store in Portland—and he's like, ‘Want to come try out for Yob?’ I already knew a handful of Yob songs, so our first rehearsal just felt really natural.”
Despite landing the job, Rieseberg knew he had big shoes to fill.
“I wanted to do Isamu justice,” Rieseberg says. “The old bass player was a very different player than I was, and I learned a ton from watching him because he has so much patience. I was a pretty aggressive player back then. I was really into Bad Brains’ Darryl Jenifer Carol, and I grew up hugely into Flea [this is how we got on the topic of RHCP, btw]—bassists that did a lot of fills, were really busy, but Yob is just not that kind of music.”
It was then that Rieseberg transformed both his style and himself, mirroring the introspective nature of Yob’s music. “[The change] was me just letting go. I learned to really listen. When I joined the band it was like ‘Oh wow, I haven’t been a very good listener.’”
Rieseberg’s transformation from aggressor to listener, I think, is indicative of Yob’s appeal in general. In a world that often feels overwhelmingly bleak, their music allows listeners to feel a sense of Zen-like comfort. It’s not escapism, per se, but an acknowledgement of and harmony with a darkness that’s impossible to escape. It’s acceptance, listening, and letting go. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to Yob during the pandemic, but it’s been a loud, thunderous balm for my soul when things seemed especially bad.
“We want to help,” Rieseberg says. “We want to help people feel good. A lot of people that listen to Yob, they find a lot of power. The music brings them peace. We're trying to get to a place where we feel something from it, too. And when that happens, it translates well to the audience. Which is fucking amazing.”
Yob plays at Brick By Brick on Monday, March 21.
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Julia Dixon Evans edited this post. Thanks, Julia. Go follow her on Twitter.