Several members of sludgy metallic hardcore outfit Will Haven have branched out with a fledgling project dubbed Foreign Film. Guitarist Jeff Irwin, who serves as the guitarist & primary songwriter for the long-running Sacramento, CA natives mentioned above has been leading this project, which came to be back in 2023.
While the band’s chosen moniker sports a nod to a 1997 Will Haven cut, the vision for the group exists outside of the Will Haven wheelhouse, despite featuring much of its current DNA. Speaking of which, Irwin is joined in the band by a trio of his Will Haven bandmates, including drummer Mitch Wheeler, guitarist Sean Bivins and bassist Adrien Contreras.
Recording sessions for the collective’s upcoming debut album took place at J Rigged Studios in Sacramento, CA with Weston Ray and Robert Kerr taking on the production and engineering duties. Those sessions also called for some guests, with Robin Florkin providing piano/keyboards where needed, while Ryan Kerr added additional guitar and Tami Taracena contributed backing vocals. A press release mentioned the likes of Pink Floyd, The Cure, Hum and more as points of influence for this project.
Ahead of a 2026 release for their initial full-length salvo, the band have just shared a video for their new single “Santa Carla“. Irwin commented of it:
“This is a project I have been working on for over a year; started out with old demos I had written and now has become what we know as Foreign Film. I recruited my brothers in Will Haven to help me write and record my ideas, and now we have an album worth of songs. Our first single, ‘Santa Carla’ is the oldest song of these demos. I worked with Dave Blackley, who has directed Will Haven’s recent music videos, to help me come up with a movie-style vision for this song.”
The song is scheduled to arrive on digital service providers this Friday, August 15th. While it’s unclear if this single honors the source material, the title of the song has ties to a film that is likely not foreign to any 80s horror movie fan worth their salt: 1987’s vampire classic ‘The Lost Boys‘. Santa Carla was the name of a fictional Californian city that enduring hit movie took place in.
