Moosehead - the Cornwall band taking the metal scene by storm

Cornwall may be known for its sea shanties and summer festivals but there are loud rumblings of a metal scene revival. Moosehead may not yet be on your Spotify playlist, but the heavy rock band is certainly looking to change that. We met Dunk Jewitt, the lead singer, guitarist Jan Trefusis, drummer Ross Morris and bass player Joe Hugh at Dunk's house in St Eval and from the banter flying back and forth between Dunk, the oldest member in the band, and youngest member Joe, with Jan and Ross left in the middle shaking their heads in despair, you can see the great complicity that exists between them all.

All four of them certainly share the same love of heavy metal, hard rock and the grunge bands that came out of Seattle in the nineties from Nirvana to Pearl Jam, Soundgarden to Alice in Chains. Heavy metal is as far away from the saccharine polished fluff that's being manufactured by music studios on a regular basis as you can imagine. Think loud, distorted guitars, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, and aggressive vocals often associated with themes of rebellion and intensity.



Think Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Mötley Crüe and Metallica. Think Gojira who featured in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics last summer. Now, add Moosehead to that mix, and if it all goes well for the heavily tattooed quartet from Cornwall, you could soon be headbanging in a mosh pit near you to the sound of Carved in Stone, Sleepless, Karma or Albino Baboon - all songs from their debut album.

Dunk moved to St Eval in 2020 having been in bands in the area before that and up north many moons previously. He put the word out and soon hooked up with Jan and Ross. Through work and mutual acquaintances they met Joe who kept trying to place his bass-playing mates with the band.

After three failed attempts Dunk asked Joe if he didn't play bass himself which he admitted he did. "Why not tell us from the start?" joked Dunk. "That's just Joe all over.

" That was 2022 and now things are looking up. Dunk, who was signed to Polydor in the 90s and was the lead singer of fellow Cornish band Bhodazaffa, has done the pub circuit all over the country ad nauseam. Without any disrespect to the pubs like the Union Inn in who have given the band a chance, Moosehead is now hitting some of Britain's bigger stages in towns like Bristol or Southampton or in the Midlands where there is a much stronger metal scene.

"It seems the further north you go and the stronger the metal scene is," Jan, who played guitar with Oxford's steamy rockers King Furnace in the past, said. He too has been playing in bands since he was in school and carried on doing so after moving away from his native Cornwall to Oxfordshire, before he returned home a few years ago. "I had a couple of singles out.

I had come back to Cornwall with my family and for a job before Covid. I needed to be in a band. I saw this ad for a new band and I got together with Dunk and we jammed for a bit and gelled.

" Like Dunk and Jan, Ross and Joe have also honed their musical skills in school and pub bands until they met up with the other two and it clicked. "I've done the pub circuit for 20 years and I was sick of it," Ross said. All feel the same way about the Cornwall music scene and, whether it is the pubs or the festivals, the trend is all about putting on cover bands because it is easy.

However it means new talents and indie and metal bands like Moosehead are not given their chance to shine. "In one of the pubs where we played," recalled Ross. "Every name on the board was a cover band.

It's the same for all the festivals. "It seems to be the preference because it fills events but it can be disheartening." Dunk agrees: "There aren't many huge places in Cornwall where you can play to big audiences.

15 years ago there was a great scene in Cornwall. But it seems nowadays people don't want to listen to original music. There is absolutely no reason why Cornwall can't have a strong metal scene but events organisers don't want to take the risk.

" With one 10-track album called Carved in Stone, which was recorded at Cube studio in Silverwell near St Agnes, Moosehead is on the cusp of greatness, and 2025 could be the turning point. "We've had a really good start of the year with some good gigs in Southampton," Dunk said. "Kelly, my wife who's the band manager, put some feelers out not just in Cornwall but all over the world in fact and it worked.

"We even had an invite to play Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles." Moosehead supported Palm Springs based Desert rock legends Brant Bjork Trio in Southampton at The 1865 in February. They have also supported Jamie Lenman (Ruben), Cornwall's own rock legends King Creature and are about to play at the Bristol Thunderbolt venue on April 3 and The Cornish Bank in on April 10 where they will be supporting British alternative metal band Earthtone9.

Moosehead also secured the headline spot on the Friday night at the Cornwall Tattoo Convention at the Royal Cornwall Showground this August. King Creature were catapulted into the limelight as the opening act for Motörhead in 2015 at The . Since then, they have played shows and festivals across the UK, including Hard Rock Hell, Festival and , hence showing the way for Moosehead to follow.

However it was an interview and album review in the national rock and metal magazine Powerplay with metal scene legend Chris Sutton, the biographer of Black Sabbath, giving them a 10/10 top mark after loving Carved in Stone so much, that seems to have opened many new doors for Moosehead. In his review in the March/April issue of the mag, he wrote: "Questions Answered shows off their Sabbath roots in the slow intro and bridge, but otherwise firmly occupies Metallica territory in full attack mode. In all honesty I would rate Moosehead not only as the best new band I have heard this year, but one of the best bands out there at the moment.

" All four of them are visibly proud of the magazine praise. "We contacted the magazine and they said they wanted to do an interview and give us a 10/10 review. We thought it was some sort of joke but it was all kosher," Jan said.

"We did the interview over a Zoom chat and tried to keep it clean, well Ross and I did anyway, and it was an amazing review. Having a review in the magazine and such a write up was a childhood dream right there." Dunk added: "Before we were searching around where to play and wondering if venues would let us play, now things are picking up quite quickly.

" Ross agreed: "Things are definitely starting to happen which is a little overwhelming but it's what we want and we're ready." But what's with the name Moosehead, you'll wonder? Dunk said the name is a reference to the grunge music scene that has influenced them all, which mostly came out of Seattle near the Canadian border. "You can get a band together and write all your songs," he explained, "but when it comes to names, you can try and think of a thousands names.

I came up with Moosehead one day and they all looked at me and went meh. People keep saying, oh just like the Canadian beer. So it stuck.

" Moosehead have been working on their second album but while they released Carved in Stone as a full album back in 2023, they have decided to shake things up and do things differently with their second. They will again use Cube to record the tracks but will release one each month throughout the rest of the year through Truro-based music distribution company Routenote before they are compiled into an album, in time for a number one - well maybe! Dunk said: "All of my songs are like short stories. I have a complete picture in my head, a storyline and then the lyrics flow from that.

Kind of like a grown-up version of Dr Seuss. Me, Jan or Joe will come up with a riff, be it a verse or a chorus, and then they’ll hand it over to the other ones to complete and finish. I write the lyrics.

" Looking to the future, Moosehead are full of ambition. And why not, their music is really good. Dunk said: "I want us to be on par, no, better than King Creature with whom we played at the Cornish Bank which was jammed packed with metallers.

We want to be even bigger than that. We've all grown up wanting to be rock stars. Kiss were like super heroes when I was a kid.

" Jan agreed: "Writing music together, sharing it with people on stage and seeing people sing your songs back at you. It's just the best thing ever." "We may not make it big, which would be nice of course, but Cornwall absolutely deserves a metal scene," Ross added.

"And we want to be part of that." Check out everything about Moosehead by clicking ..