After 2023’s Projekt release of the iconic future western album Desolation and Radiation, DELREI’s Alessandro Mercanzin returns from the red desert with this seductive collaboration of slow-burning tension. On Wicked Wicked Ways the Italian guitarist joins forces with Portland, Oregon’s veteran vocalist Collin Hegna of Federale; the three brand new tracks’ dreamlike atmosphere sees desire, danger and fatalism blur into one! Blues, psych-rock, gothic americana, and dark country converge carried by Hegna’s hauntingly magnetic voice and Mercanzin’s reverberating “Lynch-Badalamenti” electric guitar twangs immersed in shadowy, atmospheric tones.
Post-Punk.com wrote about DELREI’s debut, “It’s a territory where the nights are awash with an eerie chill, a land of crimson horizons drenched in melancholy solitude. Each note summons forth an ethereal spectre that draws you into a hypnotic trance, unveiling an arid yet mesmerizing world of forlorn solitude. This is the new West.”
DELREI (Alessandro Mercanzin): guitars, bass, synth & drum programming
Collin Hegna: vocals & mellotron
? Wicked Wicked Ways talks about a past that continues to haunt. It centers on a dangerous relationship where allure and desire coexist with fear, suspicion, and the awareness that certain behaviors keep causing pain. Wicked wicked ways, all your wicked wicked ways…..
? In Darkness seems as if David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti crafted an uncovered continuation of Lost Highway as a song unfolding somewhere between a flickering neon motel sign and an endless desert road at night. The track moves like a shadow through the dark, seductive and unsettling: cinematic spirals both familiar and disturbingly new. Would you join the ride?
? Give Your Heart to Me describes a dark love, marked by pain, control, and the impossibility of breaking free with an almost ritualistic and cursed tone. In the middle section there’s a spoken part called the “Homeric Hymn 24 to Hestia:” the Hymn asks Hestia, goddess of the hearth and of domestic order, to welcome and bless the song that will follow.
As if that wasn’t enough, DELREI will be touring Europe in April 2026 with dates across Germany, Austria, Croatia, France, Belgium, Italy, and Hungary. Follow them on social media and if you can don’t miss the chance to experience DELREI live!
