Netherwilds have released "Siege Proof Hovel," another dispatch from a kingdom made of mud, ruined teeth and class resentment. The song lands ahead of Peasant Rising, the debut album from the peasant metal project, out October 9 via King Volume Records.
Worm Chewer, the filthy peasant narrating all of this, is Dave Monks, who fronted Tokyo Police Club for close to twenty years, carrying the band from Newmarket, Ontario to Letterman, Coachella and Glastonbury before finishing with four sold-out nights at Toronto's History in November 2024. He started filming himself in Ireland as the character around the time the band ended, caked in dirt and fitted with a set of horrifying prosthetic teeth, muttering in broken Middle English about hunger, labor and the men who own the land. The videos have run up 5.5 million likes on TikTok alone. The routine picked up a following and then a mythology, and the medieval roleplay turned out to rest on grievances that read as thoroughly current.
The first Netherwilds song, "Return the Goat," went up digitally in July 2025 and stood as the only one for a year, getting its video treatment just this summer, directed by Noah Douglas and Jake Thompson and produced by Nathaniel Min. Bouzouki and medieval instrumentation ran alongside blast beats behind a narrator whose grievance over one stolen animal swells into holy war and ends with the title chanted in Latin. Monks came to metal late, and the song has the conviction of someone who found the right register on his first attempt.
"Siege Proof Hovel" is the second song to surface from Peasant Rising, and it runs plucked medieval strings into chugging riffs.
The album behind it promises a full feudal hierarchy, peasants to kings with executioners and mystics along the way, borrowing the shape of a serf uprising to talk about who holds the money now. King Volume says skits thread the story between songs while thrash, doom, punk and industrial metal carry the weight.
"It was an admittedly experimental process," Monks says of the record, "but I've always believed experimentation creates opportunities for success."
Netherwilds have performed live only once, a July 3 show at Toronto's Monarch Tavern. Whether the full scope of Peasant Rising can make the leap from viral mythology to the stage is a question the October 9 release will only start to pose.
