‘Mirror, Mirror’reflects Wax Fang's love of horror movies

There are some sinister aspects to Wax Fang’s new release, “Mirror, Mirror,” enough that it’s worth wondering if things are all right in songwriter Scott Carney’s world.

They are. Or at least he’s pretty sure they are. Probably.

“I don’t necessarily try to sit around and write about myself or my life,” he said. “A lot of it comes from my subconscious, but that subconscious is me and is informed by my life. Songs on this album are maybe a little more personal in nature ... but I don’t really sit down and say, ‘I’m going to write a song about this!’ I sit down and stuff just comes out.

“I think I’ve got a little better handle on it now, in that I can figure out what I’m writing about, but on ‘Black and Endless Night,’ that first record I did, I didn’t know what the hell that album was about. But, like six months later, I sat down and realized, ‘Oh, that was me being depressed’ or whatever.”

“Mirror, Mirror” is certainly dark, with some disturbing imagery drawn from dream-like scenarios and Carney’s love of film. “Dawn of the Dead of the Night of the Hunter,” for example, combines the titles of two very different kinds of horror movies, a huge pop sound and lyrics about not hiding in shadows, but hiding from them.

Carney said that he, bassist Jake Heustis and drummer Kevin Ratterman, who has since left the band, recorded 10 songs beginning in 2010 but ultimately chose to finish four and release them as an EP. The songs belonged together, he said.

“These songs in particular are a little darker in tone,” he said. “It’s kind of what unified those songs, why we chose those four, because there is a thread. It was intentional in those songs, but not the direction we’re going. It’s a brief foray into darkness.”

Carney is feeling anything but dark this week.

“Mirror, Mirror,” which came out Oct. 30, is Wax Fang’s most substantial release since 2008’s monumental “La La Land.” The band performs an album-release show Saturday at Headliners Music Hall, and Carney and Heustis are finishing up another release for early next year, an album-length project made up of three massive singles in “The Astronaut, Pts. 1-3.”

For Saturday’s show, drummer Dave Chale will sit in along with the Deloreans’ Jeremy Perry, on guitar and keyboards. Carney has no idea when, or if, Wax Fang will add a permanent drummer.

“For all intents and purposes, for the next little while the band will be just Jake and me,” he said. “We’re playing musical drummers, which is kind of fun but tough because these aren’t necessarily rock band 101 kinds of songs.

“Eventually someone will pop up and it’ll be like, ‘That’s the guy.’ I loathe the idea of auditioning, so it’s fortunate that we know enough people we can call on who we know will work. We may just roll with the idea of being a two-piece.”

Contact Jeffrey Lee Puckett at (502) 582-4160. Or email jpuckett@courier-journal.com.