It seems like everybody and their mother is talking about Geese and their lead singer, Cameron Winter, these days.
The band’s sudden emergence in the indie rock scene has come largely due to the success of their 2025 album, “Getting Killed”, but also due to the eyes drawn by their frontman in the past year. This is due to the release of his solo project, “Heavy Metal”. Just over a year old, the project has already built a cult following, primarily due to the oddity of Winter and the bold bass in his voice. Winter’s success from Geese has become just an extension of the name he has already made for himself.
Following Geese’s critical success upon the release of their 2023 album “3D Country”, Cameron Winter sought to build upon his sound. Previous works from his band were different – they were loud, more in-your-face, and unpredictable. But Winter wanted to explore more intimate sounds–sounds that had been developed in the 60s during the peak of folk music by the likes of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, where the songs relied more on the words than anything else. From here, he began to work on his solo record, which would develop the ideas he gained from Geese to achieve the newer sound he desired.
“Heavy Metal” is an extremely bold record – you would be hard-pressed to find a musician who effortlessly flows between the topics of religion, romance, and mortality like Cameron Winter does. The tracks feel like the beauties of Leonard Cohen and Zeppelin met in the middle at the crossroads of America’s best poetry, tying themselves up within the weird, uncomfortable delivery of Winter.
His first track on the album, “The Rolling Stones”, is the perfect example of this – from vocalizing about Ronald Reagan’s attempted murderer to Brian Jones’ drowning (hence the title of the track), Winter flutters over a beautiful, tropical instrumental as he croons to begin the record. From here, Winter only gets better and more compelling.
His hit song, “Love Takes Miles,” is perhaps the best song of the 21st century. Everything from the lyricism to the pacing of the track is perfect, making it a fan favorite, but also a door to a larger crowd via the internet. The music video has blown up since it was released a couple of months ago due to a feature from Lucas Hedges, but the song itself has also gained traction through its topping lists on Pitchfork and Perfectly Imperfect. “Love Takes Miles” is a force to be reckoned with – it’s a rare occasion where the mainstream audiences and indie music forums agree on something: the song is an all-timer and easily one of the best on “Heavy Metal”.
From there, Cameron Winter takes listeners on a completely different path. Right after the upbeat sounds of “Love Takes Miles” end, he takes the pace to a grinding halt, hitting the listener with arguably his darkest track, “Drinking Age”. He explores the things he doesn’t like about himself, saying he saw himself in the future and “he’s a piece of shit”. The story is relayed over a devastating piano piece. “Drinking Age” is a draw back to the overall sound of the album, and in a way, it feels like Winter is reminding people that “Heavy Metal” isn’t an album full of ten “Love Takes Miles”-like tracks, but rather a more somber-sounding record.
Throughout the rollout of the album, Winter often noted how different the recording of his solo record was compared to his work with Geese, noting that he felt that if he made these songs with the band, it would hold them back in a way.
As he put it when sitting down with NME, “For Geese songs, I’m really prepared, and for this, I was not prepared, which made things more difficult.” However, that lack of preparation is what allows the record to breathe in all sorts of ways. With “Heavy Metal”, you get a lot of lengthy instrumental arrangements and certainly a lot of imperfections within the lyrics. In a way, it almost feels quirky, like you don’t know what to expect track by track.
One of the project’s most unpredictable moments comes from the penultimate track, “$0”, where Winter spends over half the track mumbling and letting the song ride a wave of instrumentals. Sandwiched between these two moments, he delivers his most devastating writing. Here, he bellows desperately about his belief in God, where he shrieks, “God is real, God is real, I’m not kidding, I think God is actually real”. “$0” is a critical point in the album where Winter resorts to religion following his self-consciousness and his introspection.
“Heavy Metal” is exactly what makes both Winter and his band special – it is a celebration of the inability to conform to the standards of modern music, while delivering some of the deepest and most introspective writing in the current world of music. In twenty years, people will be looking back at “Heavy Metal” the same way we view albums like Jeff Buckley’s “Grace” – almost like a sacred text that gives us a glimpse into the beginning of a prodigy who will stay at the top of the music business for years to come.