Will Haven members launch Foreign Film with Mitch Wheeler on drums

Mitch Wheeler is playing in a very different lane with Foreign Film, and that is the part drummers should clock first. The new Sacramento project from Will Haven guitarist Jeff Irwin released its debut album, A Love Letter, and the Somnolence video on June 12, turning what could have felt like a side-project rumor into a full launch.

For Wheeler, the appeal is obvious: Foreign Film gives him room to play as part of the song’s atmosphere, not just as the hard-driving force under a wall of guitars. Irwin started writing the material in 2023 to chase ideas that did not fit Will Haven’s metallic hardcore attack, and the new band’s references point toward a wider palette, with influences drawn from Pink Floyd, Mew, Hum and The Cure. That is a very different rhythmic job description, and it suggests Wheeler can lean into space, dynamics and texture instead of the straight-forward punishment Will Haven fans already know him for.

The core lineup features Irwin, Wheeler, guitarist Sean Bivins and bassist Adrien Contreras, with Robin Florkin on piano and keyboards, Rylan Kerr on guitar and Tami Taracena on vocals helping push the project beyond a conventional metal offshoot. A Love Letter runs 10 tracks, including Aprile, Kwen, Wish, Santa Carla, Sol, Somnolence, Terrace, Black Sky, Love Letter and Essen. The record followed a year of demos and another full year of recording at J Rigged Studios in Sacramento, with Weston Ray and Robert Kerr handling producing and engineering duties.

That kind of build time matters to drummers because it usually means the parts were written to serve the arrangement, not just fill space. Foreign Film is also arriving with real momentum: earlier music and video came through Santa Carla, and the band planned a June 19 release show at Goldfield Trading Post Roseville in Roseville, California, with dates lined up in the United States and Europe. This is not a one-off jam with a familiar name attached. It is a fully formed album campaign that asks Wheeler to play in a different register, and that alone makes Foreign Film worth hearing now.

The name carries its own signal too. Foreign Film echoes a song title from Will Haven’s 1997 debut El Diablo, which makes the project feel less like a break from history than a rework of it. For drummers, that is the hook: same chemistry, different pressure, and a debut record built to show what Wheeler sounds like when the music gives him room to breathe.