Q&A: GRLwood Returns with a Vengeance on New Trilogy of Albums ‘BLOOD,’ ‘SWEAT’ and ‘TEARS’
GRLWOOD BREAKS THEIR HIATUS WITH AN EMOTIONAL AND POWERFUL TRILOGY – Louisville-based punk band GRLwood has made a triumphant return after a five-year hiatus, marking their comeback with the most prolific outpouring of creativity to date — a trilogy of albums titled BLOOD, SWEAT and TEARS. The first album in the series, BLOOD, was released last month, their first full-length release since 2019. The band recently followed up with the second installment, SWEAT, cementing their return with a burst of raw, emotionally charged music.
At the core of GRLwood is Rej Forrester, a powerhouse musician who wrote, recorded, and produced all three albums entirely on her own. Touring with just a drummer to accompany her guitar-driven performances, Forrester’s music is a sonic blend of influences — grunge, nu-metal, psych-rock, and hip-hop — all fused with the deeply personal experiences of her upbringing as a queer woman in the conservative American South.
Forrester’s background is as compelling as her music. Growing up in an oppressive political climate shaped her resilience, and the six years she spent living on and off the streets, busking and hitchhiking around Europe, proved to be her most formative years as a musician. The grit of those years — constantly on the move, struggling to survive — has seeped into the DNA of GRLwood’s sound. The albums reflect not only a battle for survival but also an unflinching confrontation with emotional trauma and personal healing.
The trilogy is a journey through Forrester’s emotional landscape, with each album exploring the highs and lows of her experiences. BLOOD, the first in the series, set the stage with visceral themes of anxiety, anger, and heartbreak. Tracks like “Pay the Rent” tap into the despair and frustration of living paycheck to paycheck, while others reflect on the pain of being lied to and abused by those who refuse to heal. This raw, emotional honesty resonates throughout GRLwood’s music, giving voice to the struggles of marginalized identities in an unforgiving world.
The recent release of SWEAT expands on those themes, leaning into the cathartic power of music as both a form of expression and a vehicle for healing.
GRLwood’s return with this trilogy not only marks a new chapter for Forrester but also solidifies the band as a vital voice in modern punk, tackling tough topics with an honesty and intensity that is impossible to ignore. As Forrester continues to unpack her journey in the upcoming release of TEARS, fans can expect GRLwood to keep pushing the boundaries of punk with music that is as emotionally raw as it is sonically bold.
Photography Credit: Maggie Friedman
LUNA: Thank you for sitting down and talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar yet, what kind of atmosphere or emotional space do you aim to create for your listeners?
GRLWOOD: It's not a goal of mine. Usually it’s me singing about some pretty wild shit and so mostly so that people don't feel alone when they're going through wild shit.
LUNA: Are there particular moods or themes you find yourself gravitating towards when writing and performing? How do you channel these into your music?
GRLWOOD: It's all like a journal. It's just getting out the feelings.
LUNA: You just released your fourth record SWEAT which is also the second release of your trilogy and a huge congratulations is in order! What is the inspiration behind the record and what are some themes and emotions you explore?
GRLWOOD: God, thank you. I need them out. It's like when you're pregnant for too long and that's how it feels to me. I want to get it out. I'm ready to fucking slang puss and make more. The BLOOD one is what people would expect from GRLwood. It's still got really heavy rock vibes, but mixed with the really pretty, ethereal elements, which is, I think, what people have come to expect. That's just the person that I am, usually either angry or sad. SWEAT is a lot more my taste on commercial. I've always made so many different genre pieces where SWEAT is opening the door of that, whereas TEARS has not one single rock song on it at all. I think that's going to be a real big shocker. It's just more psych-rock. There's a lot of psycho songs and really silly, so I love not being controlled by anything. I get to release whatever I want, whenever I want. There's a lot of silliness on this album and you can tell nobody's trapping me. I'm saying wild shit.
LUNA: What did the creative process behind SWEAT look like? Can you share a bit about the songwriting and recording process for SWEAT? How did it differ from your previous albums?
GRLWOOD: I feel like the writing process for this trilogy has been way more work in a good way than anything else. It's how I always wanted to put music together, if anything, it's the first albums that I released were the ones that felt like bullshit to me. I didn't know how the fuck the system worked, right? When we had the label, and they were like, ‘okay, you need to go in. Here's your budget.’ I thought that meant do everything in one take and be done with it and that it was just one shot. We just did all of it. I really was not a fan of the product that came out from that because there was no there was no layering, there was no base, there were no bridges. It was just our live set, because I thought it was get as much done on as little as possible for the first. The second album was a little bit more work, but I still wasn't a big fan of the products, whereas, like these ones, I made them all in my bathroom closet by myself. I was extremely in touch with the entire process. I feel like these albums are the evolution of my sound, with having absolute control and as much time as I need to really turn out a product. So if anything, honestly, I want to fucking go back and redo the Daddy album like, real bad, real bad.
LUNA: What is your favorite song from SWEAT and why do you love it? Is there a certain lyric or message that stands out to you the most?
GRLWOOD: There are a couple songs on this album where my team gently recommended to me that the lyrics were really immature. ‘Do you think maybe you could rework on these and then bring the song back again?’ And then I just did nothing and sent it again, and they were like, ‘oh, this is great.’ And I'm like, ‘that's right.’ So that would be why “Hey” is probably one of my favorites. I think it's fucking funny. “Drive (Tourettes)” also starts with everybody has to poop, sometimes everybody has to pee. I feel like I wouldn't be able to be putting that out if I was being held to a contract with somebody. I feel lucky that I'm a free agent. I get to just put out whatever the fuck I want, whenever I want. SWEAT is getting into the more pop-rock realm and psych-rock realm, whereas TEARS, there's not a single rock song at all on it, so it really starts shaking up the genre.
LUNA: GRLwood's return after a five-year hiatus has been highly anticipated. How did the time away from releasing music influence the direction of your new albums and the decision to create a trilogy?
GRLWOOD: Well, that was fucking covid. So covid was crazy, and it mostly was me trying to get all my fucking shit together. Since the inception of GRLwood, the very first song I've ever put out as a little special Easter egg for the little hardcore bands running around there is actually like a synth-pop song on SoundCloud. I've been making hip-hop songs, pop songs, alongside all these rock songs since the day I was conceived. I've always been making everything, lots of things that are well outside of genre limitations or binaries and that's always been something really important to me to express. Though I've always had fast, heavy songs, I've also had these really pretty ethereal songs, right? I always thought it was a misnomer for people being like, ‘oh, you have a stupid punk band.’ It's always something that doesn't define me, even if other people feel that they recognize it that way, whatever.
What I'm stoked about is having the time and space to be able to put out all this music I've written, like TEARS, for example, there are songs on there from 2017 that I had written and recorded on my phone and had all the demos done for a long time. I just never had the time to release them, because a label was paying for us to go into a studio and they're like get in, get out. There were 60 tracks I had been sitting on for years, let alone about fucking 26 more that I had made in the last few years, and while I'm actively sitting down and recording all these tracks, I'm still making more.
These couple years, I was still making a fuck ton of music, but this was the whole part of the process where I was sending massive dumps of demos to my team and management team, and they would revise them and be like, ‘okay, this one's a yay, this one's a nay, this one's a yay, this one's a nay.’ I was already recording some of these singles in 2021 so for me, five year hiatus is not what I would describe it. I was very much working the entire time and releasing those singles I made in 2021 at the end of 2021 and in 2022 released them. It's all the behind the scenes work I've been doing, whereas, I've not been touring those since then, but mostly due to covid, we were trying to get back out. Because all of the bands were trying to get back out from schedules that were canceled, there was like eight placement holds on every fucking venue for a year. I learned a lot about that back end of the touring industry that way. Everyone was trying to get back in that and I was mostly just really focused on recording and releasing. I cannot be touring and recording and releasing at the same time. It's just not sustainable. It's not realistic.
LUNA: Your music has always been known for its raw energy and unapologetic themes. In what ways do you feel you've evolved as artists and storytellers since your earlier releases? How does SWEAT reflect this growth?
GRLWOOD: I don't fucking care. I don't care if you like it. I don't care if you don't like it. It's not for you. Just really being free, feeling free that I don't hold myself to these limitations and boundaries. Just because somebody else might perceive something of me doesn't mean that's what I am. I don't have somebody breathing down my neck saying, ‘this song has to be punk, and now this one has to be a love song, and now this one has to be a ballad.’ I'm so lucky I don't have that. I can literally write a song where I open up with everybody has to poop sometimes, like that's the first line. It doesn't matter.
LUNA: Do you feel like you have more autonomy since 2019?
GRLWOOD: Yes, I think so. It's the need to constantly produce a product, produce a product, produce a product. Because my goals were very aligned with what my label was at the time, what their goals were, right? I didn't know anything. I was like, whatever, fuck it. I just want to create. And then if you say this is what I'm supposed to do, this is what I'll do, because that aligns with my goal, whereas now it's very different. Now I just want to make cool shit. I just want to make shit that I enjoy, and I feel like I am in that position. I do feel like, yes, I do have more autonomy now totally.
LUNA: Given that SWEAT is part of a trilogy, what can listeners expect from the final installment? How does each album build upon the last in terms of narrative or musical evolution?
GRLWOOD: BLOOD is what you'd expect. SWEAT is when it's starting to stretch out a little bit more, and then TEARS is not going to have a single rock song on the entire album, which I think is very exciting. I'm sure a lot of people will be very mad about it. I don't really care. But also to get new fans, but also to really cement in that cult following by doing anything and everything. It's not about this scene bullshit. It's about fucking art. So BLOOD, conceptually, is angry and then ethereal. A lot of songs have really dark, deep themes. BLOOD is extremely serious. I would say that I don't think there's one bullshit song on that album, I guess now that I think about it, it is very deep and serious and rigid. I think with what's going on, SWEAT is a lot more fun and much more loose in terms of the defining characteristics. “Pretty Ugly” is a pop rock song. “17” is almost like an indie-bedroom pop song. “Do It Well” starts to move into psych-rock, and then it keeps moving in that direction, and it devolves into acoustic songs at the end. TEARS, we move back into an angst field, I think with what a lot of the songs are about, again, there's one lightweight song on this entire album.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like for you that you would love to share with Luna?
GRLWOOD: I want thefucking rest of the albums out. Remember the thing about being pregnant too long and it's just done? Get it out. Get it out, dude. It's done. I have 60 fucking tracks, and those were on the back end. I love recording. I love doing what I did with BLOOD, SWEAT and TEARS. You never know what the fuck is going to come out of me. I like it like that. So keep throwing curveballs. I think the team really wants to prioritize touring for a little bit, so now that we're releasing all of these, touring will be the priority for a bit. But as soon as they let me go a little bit, and I get a little more slack in my life, I want to write and I'm going to hide in my basement for six months straight.
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