By Simona Mihalca 
Will O’Dusk is an emerging rock band featuring Rick (vocals), Dean (guitar), Luke (bass), and Ste (drums). Known for their blend of Southern Rock, Post-Grunge, Hard Rock, and Glam, the band’s debut album, The Long Lasting Dusk, takes listeners on a structured journey through personal darkness and subsequent resurgence. Guitarist Will O’Dusk discusses the band’s origins, their creative process, and the core philosophy that drives their music.
What made you decide to start a band? I don’t ask this to be reductive, just observing that generationally I think it’s rarer now to see new bands than it was years or decades ago.
We believe that different reasons of the same kind brought us together. Rick (the singer) had always played and sung, but never in a long-term project, while Dean, Luke, and Ste had been playing without a vocalist for more than a year when we met in 2023. We quickly discovered that we shared the same urge to channel what we had lived through in the recent past into something structured, so we began working together. And we’ve been doing so ever since.
But aside from this “not-so-peculiar” story of how we came together, we’d like to use the hook of your question to say something we feel is very important these days: we are listeners before we are musicians, and this is what the world—especially the world of music—needs the most. So, to all generations out there, listen to this: don’t stop forming bands, but above all, please, please, please start listening to new music (or don’t stop, for the lucky ones). Be curious; be the market you want to see.
Of course, this means a lot to us at this stage, but we truly believe it’s crucial for the future of music as a whole.
How did the idea for The Long Lasting Dusk first take shape?
We’d say it happened step by step. We started composing songs almost as if they had been waiting there to be written, but only when we had nearly half of the album in our hands did we realize there was also a bigger story—a movement—that could thread through the individual stories we were writing. We decided to follow that movement to see where it would lead us. And we liked what we found.
For us, the album is almost a prequel, a series of hints at the stories of the band members leading up to the formation of the band. We descended through our darkest times, and we resurfaced by starting to play together.
What strengths does each member bring to the creative process?
To be very straightforward: Dean is our riff-and-solo wizard—he’s always working on something, with or without a guitar in hand. Rick is the melody-and-words juggler, both in daily life and in the creative process. Ste is the spark of madness who can add or change a detail in a song that ends up shifting its entire direction. Luke is both structure and intention; without him, everything else would be flat or just sketched out. Together, we all work on concepts and themes.
The album is structured in two acts. What inspired you to frame it as a journey from descent to resurgence?
We may have already anticipated most of this answer, but what we didn’t say is that we really could have reversed the journey’s direction—it would simply have been a stylistic choice. But we wanted to shape it this way for two main reasons.
The obvious one is that when making music, we always look for hope: even in the darker songs, we want to add a bit of light, and the same applies to the final message of the album. The second reason is that when we decided on the final track order, we were already thinking about our next work (yes, we have plenty of ideas waiting to burst out), and we felt that ending with the resurgence in The Long Lasting Dusk would help establish continuity in our project.
What did the atmosphere in the studio feel like while working on the heaviest tracks?
We haven’t hit our heaviest yet—we’re just warming up—so we’ll see! Jokes aside, we don’t have a particular preference for heaviness or lightness, but you could definitely feel the excitement when we first heard our creations coming to life. We were more tired than ever, but twice as happy. None of us have children yet, but we imagine that emotion is the closest we’ve come so far.
Were there any unconventional sounds or techniques you experimented with?
Not really, but we can say that in a couple of songs we kept some mistakes because, in the end, they added something special to the track.
Which themes were the hardest to translate into music or lyrics?
Even if it may not immediately feel like it, this is a very intimate album—every theme touched a delicate nerve. If we had to point one out, we would talk about “White Shadow.”
First, the ballad deals with the theme of absence: the “white shadow” is the unstained spot left on a wall when a picture that hung there for a very long time is removed. Second, it deals with the conscious act of leaving an absence in someone else’s life. Third, it touches on the inevitability of that choice for certain people. It’s always hard to perform this song live while maintaining enough emotional distance to play it professionally.
Which song are you most excited to play live for the first time?
The ones we haven’t written yet! And of course, every song that’s on The Long Lasting Dusk. But really, we can’t stay silent or still for too long—we’re already touring with a few surprises up our sleeves…
Your sound blends Southern Rock, Post-Grunge, Hard Rock, and Glam. What came first, the sound or the genre? Was there ever a conscious decision of how your music should sound like, or did it just exist and then require to be put into a little niche by labels?
The sound came first, just as the inspirations came even earlier. Everyone in the band brings their own personal bag of musical heroes and fascinations, and this reflects in the songwriting. Each genre has a peculiar way of conveying meaning, and we try to mix and match these elements for our purposes.
Obviously, we’re not approaching this project like a multi-style tribute band—we have our own stylistic identity, and we truly believe it shines through the entire album. Lastly, labels (and Labels) are necessary, and we’re not uncomfortable being associated with one genre or another. We simply know that we are constantly evolving, and we like it!
What’s your favourite note to play?
The first.
What is the next milestone you want to reach after The Long Lasting Dusk comes out?
We have a few bets on the table with ourselves, and we’ll need to expand our live horizons to see who’s paying what to whom! So, get ready, Europe—we want you to feel our music through your skin, up close, very, very soon!