Verity Den: IX XVI MMXXV Instrumentals: Live and Improvised

Over the past two years, alongside FACS and Tropical Fuck Storm, verity den have been at the vanguard of guitar-based music.

Originally formed as a three-piece by Casey Proctor (Haruspex Palace) and Drag Sounds’ Mike Wallace and Trevor Reece, following the release of their excellent 2024 self-titled debut, the band moved swiftly to draft in multi-instrumentalist, Reed Benjamin, who has proved to be the Carrboro act’s secret weapon.

Verity den’s follow-up, wet glass, was one of the best releases of 2025, as the four-piece continued their sharp ascent. New threads of shoegaze, dream pop and psychedelia, woven through a vivid patchwork as wild as any other band on the planet has produced.

It’s verity den’s instrumental songs that have played a key role in this. Their lust to stray beyond the boundaries of conservative composition, setting them apart from the rest in the indie-rock stratum. (Which currently in 2026, has left a lot to be desired.)

And speaking of desires, on IX XVI MMXXV Instrumentals: Live and Improvised, verity den expose their own by transcending beyond the conventional structures that have hemmed in so many of their contemporaries. In many ways, it’s mission complete, with two long-form pieces that teleport the listener to a wonderful new place. A rush of soft colours and hazy reverb that find you enveloped in verity den’s world.

Recorded live at Mangum Street Grocery by Benjamin, the opening eponymous track begins as a protracted, rolling dreamscape. Littered with keys, sweet melodic guitar echoes and warm reverb, it’s something that reaches the same metropolis as Seefeel’s Quique. Which is interesting considering the opening bars of I / II / ETYWD / III / IV feel like something that would underpin a Warp compilation.

The 20-minute piece comprises of two separate recordings smashed together. (I, ETYWD and III recorded by Colin Swanson-White at King’s; II and IV recorded by Cory Rayborn at Haw River Ballroom.) It’s something that verity den have explored to great effect over their two albums, as Proctor explained last year.

And the results are cataclysmic. Synths, rolling through space like wisps of static before verity den fiercely launch into the maelstrom, led by a protracted jam that extends beyond verity den’s everyone thought you were dead. Navigating through more distortion and electronic embellishments likened to a transmission from another planet, ultimately, it’s here where verity den reach with these recordings.

What Bardo Pond do for weed and psychedelia, verity den do the same for shoegaze. IX XVI MMXXV Instrumentals: Live and Improvised sees verity den possessing similar traits to the Philadelphia psych veterans, to the point where their beautiful worlds entwine. The openness of improvisation, where tone and texture slowly pull the mind apart.

It’s why releases such as IX XVI MMXXV... are so vital. While perhaps neglected by most as a live recording, there’s so much more to this than content for content’s sake. These recordings, a crucial insight and make-up of the band’s DNA, which exposes something gnarled and untethered.

IX XVI MMXXV Instrumentals: Live and Improvised is out now via Three Lobed Recordings. Purchase from Bandcamp.