WAILIN STORMS, the Durham, North Carolina gothic rock band, will release their fifth album and first for Season of Mist, The Arsonist, on July 10, 2026. The album spans nine tracks—burning through themes of love, death, fear, anxiety, and the current state of the world—and arrives today alongside a music video for the simmering title track, with pre-orders & pre-saves now open.
“The Arsonist was forged in the fires of our hearts.” WAILIN STORMS vocalist and guitarist Justin Storms says. “The title track was the initial spark for the album. It’s about the fear of losing the person you love most in life, a love that is so consuming that it takes on many forms: a car crash, a tumultuous sea, vines wrapping around a tree, a house fire.”
The Arsonist is out July 10th, 2026 via Season of Mist.
Recorded by Matt Talbott of HUM in full analogue, The Arsonist rekindles the band’s roots in raw-to-the-bone blues punk as a heated response to today’s vat of overproduced music and AI slop. With swoons of Rhodes organ conjuring the Roadhouse from Twin Peaks on “Heart of Mine,” and a moaning chorus powerful enough to wake the entire cemetery on “The Wind,” the album moves between the primitive and the spectral without losing its grip. “Some of these songs are more primitive and stripped down, hearkening back to the four-track recordings that the band started with,” Storms says. “The recordings contain flaws but remain human in all the right ways. They could be a murder ballad or an old folk song that’s sung around the campfire.”
WAILIN STORMS throw heavy splashes of surrealism into the fires of The Arsonist. David Lynch‘s Wild at Heart and René Magritte‘s painting Gaspard de la Nuit (Nightwalker) were both wellsprings of inspiration, alongside the literary fatalism of Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy, Old Regular Baptist hymns, and the blues tradition. “Dead End” opens the album when the drum’s rattle leads straight into a waking nightmare: “Calm night / Birds keep plucking out our eyes.” The album’s cover art — heavily shadowed except for a tiny house gone up in flames — was painted by Storms himself, inspired by Magritte. “These songs are steeped in the trials and tribulations of everyday life,” he says.
The title track is the conceptual and emotional anchor of the record. It simmers over a shivering riff and oily slide guitar before bursting into a noisy séance that rages deep into the night. Slowly engulfed by love’s eternal flame, it draws on a melancholic folk quality reminiscent of Blind Willie Johnson‘s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.” “Like the wind controls the sea,” Storms croons over the gentle sway of his guitar. “You always had a hold on me.” The thunderous climax surges with such feverish intensity that it threatens to send the night of passion up in smoke. “‘The Arsonist’ is a very intimate song, about love and heartbreak and loss,” Storms says. “It’s romantic, but also scary.”
“I’ve always been fascinated with fire,” says Storms, who was raised by a church pianist and a Baptist preacher in Corpus Christi, Texas. As a child, he came dangerously close to accidentally burning his family’s house down. “Fire speaks to our inherent attraction to danger and annihilation, but also, our hope for transformation.” After forming WAILIN STORMS in Texas and a pass through New York City, Storms hunkered down in Durham, North Carolina, where he was joined in 2014 by drummer Mark Oates (BATS & MICE) and bassist Steve Stanczyk. Debut full-length One Foot in the Flesh Grave laid a solid foundation in 2015. Third album Rattle was featured by The Needle Drop and named one of the best albums of 2020 by Treble, Riff Magazine, Angry Metal Guy, and Machine Music. The Silver Snake Unfolds drew further attention from Decibel and Metal Hammer, and was followed by the arrival of guitarist Ben Melton, as well as tour dates with CITY OF CATERPILLAR, pageninetynine, THIS WILL DESTROY YOU, ACID BATH, EYEHATEGOD, and YOUNG WIDOWS.
The Arsonist was produced and engineered by Matt Talbott at Earth Analog in May 2025. The album was mixed by Mike Lust at Phantom Manor (“Dead End,” “Heart of Mine,” “You Never Answered,” “The Arsonist,” “Never Rest,” “The Wind,” “It’s All Dark Now Where Your Eyes Used to Be”) and by Dave Downham at Gradwell House (“Saved,” “Patient Night”). Mastering is by Dave Downham at Gradwell House. Cover artwork was painted by Justin Storms, with layout and design by Steve Stanczyk. All lyrics written by Justin Storms.
The Arsonist track listing:
1. Dead End (4:48)
2. Heart of Mine (5:13)
3. You Never Answered (4:53)
4. The Arsonist (4:52)
5. Never Rest (4:59)
6. Saved (4:24)
7. Patient Night (3:22)
8. The Wind (6:01)
9. It’s All Dark Now Where Your Eyes Used to Be (6:30)
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