HELL

Since at least 2009, Oregon’s Hell has been crafting one of the most crushing and evocative strains of extreme doom to ever appear on North American soil. Continuing the abysmal legacy of bands like Corrupted, Moss, Sunn O))) and Burning Witch, the solo endeavor led and conceived by multi-instrumentalist and sound engineer Matthew Scott Williams has from inception set out to shatter the boundaries of musical heaviness while acting as a primordial cathartic vessel for the musician’s boundless imagination and inner demons. Always and forever a representation of one’s inner hell, the project has evolved throughout the years from of a foundational framework of feedback and amplifier-worshipping slow-crawling doom, developing into an imposing experimental beast encompassing the realms of drone music, neo-folk, black metal, funeral doom, sludge metal and beyond. The project emerged from the Salem punk, folk and metal scene in the late 00’s, around the musician collective and living space known as Burial Grounds, which at aside from Williams also included Nate Meyers of Mania, Liam Neighbors of Mizmor, and Paul Riedl of Blood Incantation, among many others. The young roommates and musicians found themselves immersed in a vibrant and inspiring atmosphere littered with musical instruments and recording gear, DYI improvised house shows always happening on the premises, and touring bands constantly passing through. This hyper-creative environment was the primordial soup which ignited the emergence of Hell, with Williams conceiving the project as an experimental solo endeavor while living at Burial Grounds, for which a live lineup was soon assembled (which would famously include Meyers on bass and Neighbors on drums for years afterwrd) as well as its first home-made recorded manifestations. The first releases, including the debut ”Hell I” full-length initially emerged on cassette via Riedl’s now defunct tape label Woodsmoke, and would establish Hell as a favorite in Oregon’s underground tape trading due to the band’s unique lo-fi and experimenal production qualities, and its unusually crushing sound which often ventured into the realms of drone, black metal, neo-folk, and funeral doom, creating a unique atmosphere of anger, sorrow, and desolation. The band’s reputation as one of the heaviest and most extreme entities in the underground doom scene soon escaped beyond the confines of Salem, and began spreading up and down the West Coast via word of mouth, tape trading, and the band’s crushing live sets at DIY spaces across the Pacific North West. Shows and tours with the likes of Ash Borer, Sutekh Hexen, Demoncy, Thou, Dispirit, Knelt Rote, Stargazer and more, established Hell as a formidable live act and established the band’s notoriety as a visionary and imposing entity despite Williams’ diligent and integral efforts in maintaining the project entirely committed to the underground via a DYI approach and a completely self-sustaining and self-controlling philosophy in managing the band and publishing its works. Around 2010 Hell began working with PWN black metal and neo-folk label Pesanta Urfolk and the band’s releases started to more widely circulate on vinyl format beyond the the West Coast, while Williams also established his own label, Lower Your Head, to take care of the band’s limited edition releases, its merch, and digital releases, as well as for releasing his side projects and solo releases. During this time the “Hell II” and ”Hell III” full-length albums were released via Pesanta, creating a legendary trilogy of albums famously bearing the Gustave Doré series of cover arts from Dante’s I”nferno” that would later also see the light as various box sets, and close the first era of the band’s existence. The second era of Hell started in 2017, when the band’s colossal fourth self-titled album appeared unannounced as a limited edition cassette tape release on a then still small but emerging label from the Bay Area called Sentient Ruin. Williams and Sentient Ruin mastermind M. met while Hell stayed at the latter’s house in Oakland during a Hell summer tour and the two bonded over mutual interests, striking a long-lasting collaboration. This release was Hell’s most straightforward and crushing to date, elevated by Williams’ steadily evolving abilities as a self-taught sound engineer after years of self-producing his won works, and defined by a more focused and direct style of songwriting. Sentient Ruin and Pesanta then released the album for the fist time on vinyl the following year, while its subsequent vinyl represses were handled entirely by Sentient Ruin as the Pesanta label cased operations. Around this time Hell also began expanding its horizons as a working band, most notably by undertaking a busy touring schedule which would include dates overseas in Europe and appearances at the Roadburn and Soulcrusher festivals, among others. Williams then spent the following years split between further North American tours with Hell, touring as Mizmor’s live drummer, establishing his SubOdin home recording studio in Texas, moving the home studio back to Oregon, and working on various side-projects, collaborations and solo releases, while collecting years of ideas to be organized into the monumental return of Hell. The immense fifth full-length album “Submersus” would then be unleashed again unannounced and out of nowhere to an unsuspecting world a staggering eight years after its self-titled predecessor, in the summer 2025, again through a personal collaboration between Sentient Ruin and Williams’ own Lower Your Head imprint. This fifth full-length milestone for Hell emerged as a towering summarization of the project’s fearless vision and of its mastermind’s total control of his craft: an immense, monumental achievement not only of sonic extremity, songwriting, and DIY production value, but also in the ability of its creator to use the project’s immense sonic architecture as an immortal vessel for his inner existentialism and enduring imagination.

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