The music of Madeline Johnston, the long-running solo project's founder, doesn’t rely on overwhelming loudness, high tones or speed to convey the heaviness often associated with the alternative metal scene she’s settled into over the past decade. Instead, she deploys a hard-hitting emotional depth and breadth through melancholic lyricism delivered in a hushed, meditative tone that’s equally devastating and entrancing when paired with her trademark haunting, ambient slowcore. That’s why she likes to call Midwife “heaven metal.”
“It's about a feeling,” she explains from the peaceful comfort of her current southern Colorado home. “Heaven metal means emotional music about devastation, catharsis. Heaven metal has forged a sonic identity over time as part of my style. Lo-fi, layered guitars with a cacophony of vocals floating through it. Something dark and beautiful.”
In preparation for the release of the fourth Midwife album, No Depression in Heaven (out on Friday, September 6, via the Flenser), Johnston shared a trio of singles, including a somber sonnet called "Killdozer," inspired by Marvin Heemeyer, the muffler repair shop owner who went on a demolition spree in a modified bulldozer before taking his own life in Granby in 2004. At the time, the story made headlines across the country as the media clung to the gruesome details surrounding Heemeyer’s town-wide rampage in what has been described as a “killdozer.” But as Johnston sees it, her track is more an “ode to a city lost in the aftermath of gentrification." Even twenty years after the sad incident, Johnston found a way to make it feel relevant and relatable through Midwife.
“I am influenced by everything around me. Midwife is autobiographical and has always felt like a way to make sense of my experience: Midwife chronicles my story. That story is embedded in Denver,” the self-taught multi-instrumentalist says of her hometown.
“The process of writing music is therapeutic, like a diary,” she continues. “I come up with song ideas based on what is happening in my life and relating that back to the world around me as the framework that my story lives inside of. I am interested in the interplay between personal experience and universal experience. I want to know what it all means. I deeply want to understand the human condition.”
Follow Midwife down the rabbit hole during the No Depression in Heaven release show on Sunday, September 8, at the Bluebird Theater. Polly Urethane and DBUK (formerly known as Denver Broncos UK), two of Johnston’s favorite local groups, are also on the bill.
Midwife isn't afraid to play with brutal death metal bands, as this year's Blood Incantation tour proves.
Courtesy Alana Wool
“This show is very special to me, and I’ve made it quite the occasion,” Johnston says. “The record translates to live performance, as it is focused on the songwriting, and it’s a bit looser than some of my other work. Soft and emotive. The set will be fairly stripped down, and I can’t wait to perform these songs for the first time.
“In my performance, I try my best to open up a space for contemplation, a space where people can zone out or look inward — a meditation," she adds.
Crafting such communal concerts with her music is typically the culmination of a long, lonely exercise in tedious wordplay and composing to come up with Midwife material. Other artists can relate: It’s the work that goes unseen that can prove to be the hardest, yet most rewarding, when everything eventually falls into place in just the right way.
“I generally write alone, and my process is insular in the beginning stages. I sometimes feel like I’ve boxed myself in with the way I craft my lyrics. It’s always very minimal, and every word has to be the right one. I tried to free myself a little with the new album by using more words, and that felt good,” says Johnston, who admits to being quite shy.
“I often write lyrics before the instrumentation, and it takes me a long time. But my favorite songs are the ones that come out all together in one sitting — those magical moments as an artist when you tap into pure subconscious,” she continues. “I love the puzzle element of my songwriting, collecting a line here, a riff there, and eventually it all comes together when it needs to be put into song. That’s how I wrote this album — collecting ideas, concepts and choruses on the road.”
Then it’s time to invite other artists in. No Depression in Heaven includes collaborations with Chris Adolf and Michael Stein of American Culture, Ben Schurr and Tim Jordan of nyxy nyx, Angel Diaz of Vyva Melinkolya, and Allison Lorenzen. Working with a variety of musicians affords Johnston “the opportunity to give new life to my work in unexpected ways,” she says, and share it with the outside world.
The upcoming record is an empathetic offering that continues to redefine what heavy is. As someone who is no stranger to playing with more traditional metal bands, Johnston is a master at subverting genre stereotypes at this point.
“Heaven is about the tender and transcendent underneath a hard exterior of leather and studs, exposing a different side of the heavy music scene, where my project has been living and evolving. It's about the transient nature of what we do,” she says, adding that most of it was written “in the back of vans while on tour over the course of the past few years.
“The record engages with the contemplative spirit of rock and roll from within a body in motion. The album is inspired by ephemeral moments that make up life on tour — the totemization of vehicles, outlaws, and the psyche of America’s underbelly,” she goes on. “I aimed to create something that was rough around the edges, returning to a free recording process that was less focused on perfection and more attuned to expressing the spirit that lives inside of the songs.”
The result is “a little more cosmic and singer-songwriter-y than my earlier albums,” Johnston believes, but it also “set me free from being defined in a certain sound.”
Later this year, Midwife will join Denver death-metal group Blood Incantation on tour. At first glance, the pairing doesn’t make sonic sense. But it fits. Blood Incantation isn’t like other death-metal bands, having previously released a synth-wave album, Timewave Zero, that is akin to what Johnston is doing with Midwife. Plus, she and the Blood Incantation crew go way back.
“I’ve known the guys forever, from hosting shows for them and growing up in the scene together, but we have definitely become better friends in the past several years,” she says. “Paul Riedl [Blood Incantation's vocalist and guitarist] and I started making some ambient music together in 2021 and talking more seriously about the idea of touring. It’s been a long time in the making. We basically had to wait until it was right for Blood Incantation, on a tour that wasn’t straight-up death metal. I’ve toured with a lot of metal bands before, but I think Midwife with Blood Incantation is one of the biggest contrasts to date.”
It's another chance to showcase her heaven metal and win over roomfuls of unsuspecting crowds. Sometimes silence can be deafening.
“I love a mixed package, and I love being able to surprise people in that way. My approach is to embody the same heaviness and energy with something more delicate, quiet and contemplative,” Johnston says. “It’s one of the best feelings in the world to perform in a theater when the entire audience goes absolutely silent. Pin drop. I think it’s powerful...and it makes me feel incredibly powerful.
“My goal is to tap into something that stems from a raw emotional place to achieve the sense of heaviness that these audiences are looking for, casting spells,” she concludes. “It is possible. When it works, it really works.”
Midwife, with Polly Urethane and DBUK, 7 p.m. Sunday, September 8, Bluebird Theater, 3317 East Colfax Avenue. Tickets are $34.
