metal

Cane Hill

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New Orleans four-piece who came up alongside the nu-metal revival and then kept mutating — sludge, industrial grime and hooks delivered with a Southern sneer.

Cane Hill trace back to 2011, when the Barnett brothers first formed the band in New Orleans; after repeated lineup changes, singer Elijah Witt and guitarist James Barnett settled into place alongside bassist Ryan Henriquez and drummer Devin Clark. The band took its name from an abandoned psychiatric hospital in the United Kingdom, and released its debut single, "Sunday School," in October 2014, the same day it signed to Rise Records.

Signed to Rise Records, the band built its early sound around downtuned, groove-heavy riffing layered with electronic textures, with Witt's delivery shifting between shouted and sung lines and drawing obvious comparison to the American nu metal of two decades earlier. Their debut EP, Cane Hill, arrived in October 2015, followed by the full-length Smile in July 2016, recorded in Los Angeles with producer WZRD BLD; its single "The (New) Jesus" stirred controversy on release.

Their sophomore record, Too Far Gone, released in January 2018, drew wide critical acclaim behind singles including the title track, "It Follows," "Lord of Flies" and "10¢." The band left Rise Records at the end of 2019 and has operated independently since, releasing EPs alongside a run of increasingly varied full-lengths.

Rather than settle into one sound, Cane Hill pulled steadily toward sludge, industrial noise and Southern-tinged heaviness across subsequent releases, at one point detouring into a largely acoustic record. Their most recent album, A Piece of Me I Never Let You Find, came out in November 2024. The Louisiana influence stays audible throughout, in the drawl and the murk.

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