An Interview with Maryland Alt/Indie Rockers Castle Atom
You may have heard me singing the praises of Castle Atom on social media, and truth be told, I just can't help myself. Ever since this highly underrated band from Maryland released their new album The Years of Blood on May 18, 2025, I've been enamored with their vibrant and cathartic blend of garage rock, alternative rock, and poetic indie. Needless to say, I'm of the opinion that this is a band that is beyond deserving of being heard by many more ears and of being nestled in many more souls, so I thought it would be a good start to give Castle Atom an opportunity to introduce themselves here on Screaming From the Heavy Underground. I asked the band a few questions to help you get to know them, and I think you'll be surprised to learn that Castle Atom has been a constantly evolving concept for nearly 2 decades. Plus, these guys have some killer taste in music. Read on to learn more...
When did Castle Atom get its start and how did the band come together?
Josh: Tyler, Jesse, and I have been playing music together in one form or another since sophomore year of high school, 2007-2008. Various iterations and side projects existed before our introduction to Zach in 2022. This created such a drastic structure and writing change to our band that it ultimately facilitated a name change. We've been using that name ever since, even for our previous releases.
Jesse: Tyler, Josh, and I have been playing in bands together since we were in high school, with other members coming and going. There is stuff on Spotify from back then; we didn't go by Castle Atom at the time, but we wanted to have it all under the same banner. There were too many names, and the ones I remember were pretty embarrassing. We played some shows but didn't really seem to fit neatly into any kind of scene so a lot of it was just hanging out, goofing off, and making recordings. It's just always been something we do. There have been stretches where we might not get together for months at a time, but we always came back to it. A few years ago, we got back into it again with a little more focus. I couldn't tell you why, but that resulted in "Castle Atom 1". After we did that, we wanted to play some shows, so we started looking for a drummer. I met Zach through a friend at work, and we decided after the first jam session with him that he was the guy.
What's the meaning behind the band name?
Jesse: I like to think of it as a literal castle, with knights, a king and queen, a court jester, a wizard, and a great big dragon flying around outside trying to get in. The "Atom" can be anything. Science, God, the divine spark. When I tell people about the band, half the time they think I'm saying "Castle Adam" and I love that, but I have to correct them, or they won't find the music
Ty: The origin of our band name is a bit of a blur, but I remember there was a conversation where we were stuck on the word "Castle" for a while. At some point, "Castle Bravo" was brought up, and one of us said, "Castle Atom," and that's what we ended up going with.
Josh: I don't believe we ever had a definitive meaning meant to be associated with the moniker. With the self-identified need for a name change we essentially just relied on vague imagery with an idea that all of us would agree on it. Like so many of the best band names and lyrics, we wanted to leave it open to any fan interpretation. Cast was just a noun that Tyler had suggested, and by adding Atom it just sort of completed the post-nuclear imagery that we had already been considering for use as our band symbol/icon on merchandise.
Castle Atom in 2022
What are some of your biggest musical influences?
Ty: Sierra Ferrel, CCR, Stones, Pixies, QOTSA, Weedeater, The Jesus Lizard, KGLW. More recently, I got into Zamrock, bands like Blackfoot, Witch and Amanaz are fucking amazing.
Zach: I would say Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, CCR are some of the heavier influences to our music Personally speaking, Opeth, Black Dhalia Murder, SOAD, Led Zeppelin, and Rush are some of my favorites.
Josh: We are all in agreement in regard to song writing in general regarding the almost worship of a few legends - CCR, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Neil Young etc. Old school blues influences and everything from electronica to classical live within our shared listening worlds, but each of us tends to have their own niche of specific "playing" influences that we seem to lean into. I'd like to think this helps create our sound. I personally always find myself in the world of grunge and 90s/00s alternative more than anything as a guitarist: Soundgarden, Muse, Thrice, Bush, and the criminally underrated Dr. Dog to name just a few.
Jesse: I think we each have our own tastes, and they all find their way in. We all like our own stuff. We show each other the things we like and talk about the things we like about it, but we don't go in and say, "Let's make a Black Sabbath song." We've gotten to a point where a lot of times we'll just start jamming, and I'll be trying to do a Fugazi kind of thing on the bass, and Tyler will be doing a Hendrix thing, and Josh will be doing a Tom Petty thing, and Zach will be doing a metal thing I don't know anything about. A lot of the time it doesn't sound like any of that and it's just the most unlistenable shit you've ever heard. But every once in a while, it becomes this other thing that doesn't sound like any of those things, and we don't know what it is. But if it has something to it that feels honest and sounds cool and interesting in some way, it might turn into a song. But for me I guess you could say the Stooges, Pixies, Fugazi, Cloud Nothings, Twin Peaks, MGMT, and Gizzard.
Author's note: I love these answers! Major props in particular for mentioning Bush, one of my favorite bands on the planet!
Tell me about the process of The Years of Blood coming together (inspiration, the recording process, goals, etc).
Zach: I think the recording process was about consistency and continuously hammering it out each week.
Josh: After the completion of our first album as Castle Atom, we found ourselves longing for a more professional sound and a more personal space. Having self-produced the entirety of Castle Atom with the self-taught tenacity that reflects its recorded quality, we sought to embrace the "freedom" of us having full time careers by spending the vast majority of our free time and fiscal resources to build a studio and produce and album that truly reflected us as a collective. Our writing and recording style changed dramatically following the final recording in our rented space with Farewell My (which perhaps ironically, the sonic presence of we were unable to recreate in the new space). The end result of overdubs onto that basic track and our new writing/recording style result in The Years of Blood". The original concept was for it to be a direct sequel to our original, but the spontaneity we believe facilitated a different avenue.
Ty: When we started working on the songs for this album, we knew we'd be moving into a new space - our personal, self-built studio called EMPRESS. A lot of time went into demos, two of which made it onto the album: Farewell My and Some Things Never Change. Both were recorded at the old studio and then remixed in EMPRESS. Once we moved into the new studio, we became much more efficient in our recording process. We typically had one day a week to record, and we'd usually get at least one basic track done, plus some overdubs (sometimes two). Originally, we had planned to call the album Castle Atom II, but about halfway through the recording process, we felt it was something different. That's when we decided to change the title to Years of Blood. Once all the basic tracks were finished, we went back and touched up some songs with overdubs and then spent about 3-4 days mixing all 13 songs.
Jesse: In a way it's kind of a debut album. We did Castle Atom 1, but Zach hadn't joined the band. Even though I think there's some great stuff on there, it lacks a sort of cohesiveness. Once Zach joined, things really seemed to fall into place really quickly. From the first time we jammed with him, he just gelled with the rest of the band - the way he thinks about music, his sense of humor, everything. And he writes lyrics as well, so that added another voice. The rest of us were able to focus on our own instruments without having to rotate on the drums. We built the studio that most of The Years of Blood was recorded in, and that's a big part of why there was such a long break between the first album and this one. But we just kept jamming, writing, and recording until we had to stop because we didn't want it to be a double album...but we also didn't want to cut anything. Tyler has always done the most on the engineering side of things and he deserves the lion's share of the credit for what I see as a huge leap forward in the quality of the sound on this album compared to the first. We were also lucky enough to get the album mastered by Joe Carra at Crystal Mastering, who's done work for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Courtney Carnett, Pond, and a lot of other big names.
An awesome 30-min live set by Castle Atom, shot and edited by Nick Petrecca.
What's next for Castle Atom?
Ty: Lately, we've been doing writing exercises where we aim to write a full song from scratch in one session - whether it's good or bad, we just do it. Honestly, this has been one of the most exciting and refreshing experiences I've been a part of. There's something incredibly organic about having no intentions, and then, 6 hours later, you have a fully completed song. I'd really like to push this further with future projects.
Jesse: We haven't really taken a break after finishing The Years of Blood. We've been writing and recording one or two new songs each week. Some of them aren't like anything else we've done. No idea if it's another album or EP. I think we'll probably try and play some shows soon.
Josh: Continuing to write and record our continuingly evolving sounds as the collective entity Castle Atom. Playing live and interacting with as many musicians and fellow music lovers as possible. Focusing our former teenage and young adult angst into something more narrative and palpable through whatever auditory and otherwise expressive avenues that are available with what we have at our disposal.
Zach: A few live shows, recording the new live set, and maybe an EP before a new album.
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A massive thank you to the band for taking the time to chat with me, and for their super thoughtful and enlightening responses!
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More About Castle Atom:
Castle Atom Is:
Tyler Bowen
Jesse Geisler
Josh Whittaker
Zach Young
You can follow Castle Atom and listen to their music at the following links:
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