Emerging from the industrial Mecca that is Cleveland and recording in their studio housed in a 140-year-old drill bit factory, Arms & Armour creates a doom wash of guttural noise, guitar groans, synth colorations, drone measures, and repetitive drums. Akin to bands like Ulver, Swans, Xiu Xiu, Phantogram, GGGOLDDD, Chelsea Wolfe, Portishead, Cult of Luna, DepecheMode, Darkthrone, Brutus, and others, Arms & Armour blends crushing guitars with angular drums and soaring vocals to create a kind of soundtrack of recovery, from illness, from tragedy, from the pains of contemporary politics, from motherhood and fatherhood, from the realization that aging happens but art is forever. Arms & Armour is a duo consisting of Lauren Voss (vocals, guitar, synths) and John Panza (drum machines, acoustic drums, guitar, and synths). Self-produced and self-motivated, they have worked as Arms & Armour for 15 years and have toured the US playing shows with just about any genre one can imagine, from acoustic to death metal shows, quiet to loud, direct to atmospheric. In all cases, Arms & Armour somehow fits... Gothic sensibilities filtered through doom with elements of EDM and post-punk, Arms & Armour treats genre like a game of literary whack-a-mole, but the whacker is a cudgel covered in drill bits.
New Album, The Hunted, releases in September 2026.
