A rhythm section onslaught unfolds in the background as Wunderhorse frontman Jacob Slater sits down for our chat. The English rock ensemble are in Leeds for a few in-store gigs to promote their second album Midas, which will be released at the end of the week.

Fresh from a raucous slot at Reading & Leeds last weekend – and on a bank holiday Monday to boot – Slater shows no signs of stopping. After this, he's off to soundcheck next door.

“It’s just one of those days,” he nods. “We’re sort of in transit and running around.”

Coupled with the imminent release of Midas, Slater is in good form. The album’s been in the works for over a year now, and serves as the follow-up to Wunderhorse's Americana-infused 2022 debut, Cub.

“We had a few ideas cooking and we were supposed to do a tour in the States last year but it didn't happen. So, we figured we’d just make a record,” Slater recalls. “We all went to Minnesota to record it, but none of the ideas really worked. So we basically had to write the whole album in the studio, which luckily turned out really well. The good songs found us at the right time and we were very focused and it all kind of happened. There was some sort of alchemy there.”

Fortuitous timing and alchemy are common threads binding the Wunderhorse tapestry. The band started as a solo project in 2019, following on from Slater’s turbulent early days with the punk troupe Dead Pretties. After three years spreading anarchy across South London stages, and having released just three singles, they disbanded in 2017.

Slater retreated to Cornwall not long after, trading the capital’s chaos for a quieter life in Newquay, filling his days with odd jobs and surfing. Working as a surf instructor, a job he still holds, Slater shook off burnout and rediscovered his love for songwriting.

“Switching the focus to surfing and stuff that had nothing to do with music gave the creative part of me, which had been suffocated, the space to regenerate and breathe,” he offers.

It was around this time, amid the steady rhythms of coastal life, that Wunderhorse was born. What started as a party of one slowly progressed into a fully-fledged quartet, who had been on each other’s radar for years. Their coming together was slow, with Slater recording Cub by himself.

The record enjoyed its share of appreciative notices, with this very publication describing it as “a testament to the unique language of songwriting and the therapeutic reverberations of rage-fuelled rock”. But the frontman sees it as more of an apprentice effort.

“That first record was about learning what I want and how to hold my ground on certain things,” he reflects. “I think it's a decent collection of songs, but the production wasn’t an accurate reflection of how we feel as a band or how we sound live – and I think Midas is. So that was the gap that we wanted to bridge with Cub.”

Midas sees Wunderhorse refining their rock formula by making a rawer album with even rougher edges.

“We wanted to get to that sort of live raw sound," says Slater, "with all the mistakes and all the ugly parts of it left in because that's who we are. I think that’s exactly what we did, which I'm really pleased about.

“It's quite a dark record and we didn't set out for it to be like that. It's just what happened naturally,” Slater recalls. “I think all of our personal lives sort of inform the colour of the record. It was a combination of that and the feeling of spreading our wings for the first time as a band on a record that really influenced Midas.

“The songs have themes of brokenness and loss of function threaded through them, and I suppose this record is an ode to the things left on the scrap heap, things that have been discarded and left behind.”

The punk rawness of Midas highlights the enduing appeal of grunge, with, in particular, 'July' recalling the abrasiveness of Nirvana's In Utero. In a broader sense, Wunderhorse also belong to a select group of bands keeping the rock torch burning. At the forefront of those bands, of course, are Fontaines D.C., with Wunderhorse set to open for the Dublin boys on their upcoming European tour.

“They’re a great band," Slater enthuses. "I don't think there's many people doing what those guys are doing. When they came out, it was a real breath of fresh air and sort of made guitar music exciting again. And they haven't dropped the ball either – Fontaines just went from strength to strength. They’re the real deal. I’m really happy to be touring with them again and they've always been very good to us.”

The last time Wunderhorse opened for Fontaines was at the Iveagh Gardens in 2022 during the Skinty Fia tour, a night Slater remembers fondly.

“They took us to a couple of their old haunts,” he says. “We saw this guy - I can’t remember his name but Grian would know - playing blues guitar in this little room at the top of a pub somewhere in Dublin at two in the morning. It was one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to. He’s a local legend, apparently!”

Midas is out now. Wunderhorse will perform a sold-out concert at Vicar St on 16th October, as well as supporting Fontaines D.C. on their upcoming European tour.