Florida has a well-established history in the ways and many forms of heavy and sludge, whether it’s Cavity or Hollow Leg or Holly Hunt or Shroud Eater, on and on. Gainesville’s Thunderclap will cast their lot in the swamp at the end of next month with the release of their debut album, Inebriocean. Set to issue through Financial Ruin, which makes the three-piece labelmates to recent tour compatriots Meatwound, the seven-track outing is heralded by a teaser trailer you can see below, and listening to it in comparison to the band’s 2014 debut EP, The Moon Leads — also streaming below, because what the hell, I was on their Bandcamp anyway — the production sounds clearer, the vocals more confident and the underlying punkishness is maintained. What one might expect, in other words, with an ensuing five years of growth along a stated path.

Not that a teaser stands in for the whole album or anything, but it’s relatively safe to think it’s at least giving a basic idea. They’re new to me, but I thought it sounded cool, so here’s the info and whatnot from the PR wire:

THUNDERCLAP: Florida Doom/Rock Trio Prepares For March Release Of Inebriocean Debut LP Via Financial Ruin; Album Trailer Posted

Gainesville, Florida-based THUNDERCLAP will release their debut LP, Inebriocean, through Financial Ruin this March. The label has issued the track listing, and a brief trailer for the album.

Smoothly melding elements of metal and classic rock into a thick layer of swampy southern groove and doom, THUNDERCLAP’s output a far cry from its members other/former acts. The trio’s members, Todd Rockhill, Ale Gasso, and Danny Welsh, have collectively played with Discount, Army Of Ponch, The Draft, Unitas, J.Page, House On Fire, Black Cougar Shock Unit, and many others through the years before this act.

THUNDERCLAP combines poetry and music with different movements, tones and emotions wrapped together to create a complete experience for listeners rather than just the average one-dimensional song. Breaking away from the traditional hardcore that permeated the scene at the time, they added layers of visual and conceptual feeling to the dark, heavy music which they felt properly reflected what they were feeling inside.

Inebriocean is a journey, combining songs of varying lengths, moods and genres in order to replicate the true experience of life and art. The album’s seven lush tunes boast attributes of classic Southern rock and modern doom metal in a seamless blend of empowering riffs and emotive atmospheres. With additional vocals on the track “47” by Rachel Ryder, Inebriocean was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Ryan Williams at Black Bear Studios in Gainesville, and completed with cover art by Ted Lincoln.

See a brief trailer for THUNDERCLAP’s Inebriocean RIGHT HERE.

Financial Ruin will release Inebriocean on LP and digital platforms on March 29th, with distribution through Dead Tank Records. Watch for track premieres, preorders, and more to be issued in the coming days.

Inebriocean Track Listing:
1. Intro
2. Inebriocean
3. Low End
4. Capsized
5. 47
6. Black Crow Horizon
7. Breach

Following their Florida tour dates with Meatwound in December, THUNDERCLAP is booking new performances surrounding the release of their debut album. Watch for tour dates, a record release show, and other performances to be issued in the days ahead.

Todd Rockhill and Danny Welsh originally formed THUNDERCLAP as a two piece in 2012, a time when Gainesville really didn’t have many heavy local bands. They aimed to fill that gap – to create the music they loved. Their music was influenced by metal bands like Judas Priest and Black Sabbath mixed with the down-tuned riffage of sludgy bands like Floor and Cavity. After a few songs were written, Rockhill was working on lyrics when he came upon a book of poems by Ale Gasso. Her dark poems fit the mood of the band and soon were set perfectly to the music. Bassist Jerome Goodman was added to the mix and they released their first record, The Moon Leads, in 2014. Gasso joined as guitarist shortly thereafter. When life took Goodman in a different direction, the band dropped the bass from their lineup and has remained sans-bass trio since, into the creation of their latest album and first LP, Inebriocean.

THUNDERCLAP:
Todd Rockhill – guitar, bass, vocals, piano
Ale Gasso – guitar, vocals
Danny Welsh – drums

https://www.facebook.com/ThunderclapGVL
https://thunderclap666.bandcamp.com/releases
http://www.financial-ruin.com
http://financialruin.storenvy.com
https://financialruin.bandcamp.com

Thunderclap, Inebriocean album trailer

Thunderclap, The Moon Leads (2014)

Floridian psychedelic two-piece Ancient River are gearing up to release their sixth album, Keeper of the Dawn. A splatter platter pressed in black and white and gray with a cover that boasts an upside-down cross comprised of Navajo-skull polaroids, it will be out next month via Summer Moon, and the title-track is streaming now, all soaked in reverb vibe and laid back and molten and whatnot. It’s my first exposure to the band, who are already veterans of Austin Psych Fest, Liverpool Psych Fest and others — they’ll also appear at Milwaukee Psych Fest and the Reverence Festival this year — but the spaciousness the Gaineville duo offer argues well in its own favor.

I’d advise you to press play on the track at the bottom of the post so you can listen as you make your way through the info below, hoisted from the PR wire:

Ancient River Share New Single + New LP News

Enigmatic southern-psych duo Ancient River announce their forthcoming album Keeper Of The Dawn by sharing the title track via SoundCloud today. Keeper Of The Dawn is dense with murmurs of psych prowess informed as much by their history (this is Ancient River’s sixth full-length, and eighth release since 2010) as their rich neo-psych influences.

Ancient River, the sonic brainchild of singer/songwriter James Barreto, is an ever-changing snapshot of rock n’ roll and psychedelia, flowing from the swampy roots of the American south to the far reaches of innerspace.

Veterans of the psych scene, Ancient River’s wall-of-sound barrage has been honed by extensive touring across the states and beyond–including appearances at Austin Psych Fest (2013-2014), Los Angeles’ Psycho De Mayo (2014), and the Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia (2012), all the while sharing stages with the likes of Dead Skeletons, Rosco (Spaceman 3), Night Beats, Singapore Sling, Heartless Bastards, Lumerians & Ringo Deathstarr.

It all began in the dawn of the year 2000, as guitarist J. Barreto was making frequent trips to Gainesville to play with The Ohm, his instrumental psychedelic band which thrived on instant creation and a homegrown DIY ethic. Over the next few years they recorded several albums worth of material entirely on a 4-track tape recorder, with James collecting and refining the components of his burgeoning home studio along the way. Upon moving to Gainesville to start his own project, he began recording local bands, producing several albums while creating music for local independent films. It was out of this period of musical exploration that Ancient River was born. Barreto’s house soon grew into a fully-fledged home studio/rehearsal space, where like-minded musicians could be found tirelessly sharpening their wide range of sounds, encapsulating everything from noisy shoegaze to psychedelia to classic americana.

Locked away in the pursuit of his sonic vision, it wasn’t long before J. Barreto earned himself a reputation as a musical hermit, though it was a full two years before he took Ancient River to the stage, re-emerging as an impassioned singer/frontman while wielding his unmistakable space-rock guitar sound and creating a captivating live show accompanied by entrancing psychedelic visuals. With the addition of Alex Cordova in 2011, Ancient River encamped into J.’s home studio and after recording multiple albums filled with the sounds of timeless American fuzz rock and reverb-soaked garage-psych grooves, hit the road in 2014 for a heavy national tour.

Now the band find themselves on the eve of a new album release and traveling to some of their most highly anticipated performances to date. A pioneering and prolific act at their creative peak and still on the rise, Ancient River look to take their vision and unique sound to new heights in 2015. Let it flow!

Keeper Of The Dawn is out 4/14 on Summer Moon.

KEEPER OF THE DAWN TRACKLIST
1. This Is The Time
2. Keeper Of The Dawn
3. New Rising
4. Mother Of Light
5. The Next One
6. Stay With Me
7. Journey Into The Light Of Darkness
8. Desolation Song
9. Hallways And Mirrors
10. End Of Dawn

https://www.facebook.com/ancientriverband
https://twitter.com/theancientriver
http://www.ancientrivermusic.com/

Ancient River, “Keeper of the Dawn”

According to that great purveyor of all interwebular knowledge whose name I don’t even need to mention because you all know it, it’s at least 12 hours in a car to get from Gainesville, Georgia, to Chicago, Illinois. Taking into account that that’s the trip drummer Mike Duffy had to make every time he wanted to show up to band practice, it’s kind of understandable why it’s taken American Heritage six years to issue Sedentary, the follow up to their 2005 Translation Loss debut, Millenarian.

Not only that, but the then-three members of the band — Duffy and guitarists Scott Shellhammer and Adam Norden — also had to deal with the issue of a bassist. As in, they didn’t have one. Most bands would either hit up Craigslist or go without, but perhaps in an effort to contradict the album’s title, American Heritage decided to call upon a host of players, from Bill Kelliher of Mastodon to Sanford Parker, who also recorded the bulk of the record.

So on top of their drummer’s hellacious commute, they wound up with the task of chasing down a bass player for each track on Sedentary, while also recruiting Erik Bocek to fill the role full-time. Oh, and Norden — who also handles vocals — completely reinvented the way he sings, moving from gruff hardcore growls to a semi-melodic cleaner approach, still rooted in shouting, but infinitely more decipherable than on the last album.

Come to think of it, maybe six years between releases isn’t that bad. I’d go on about the record, but you can read the review here if you’re so inclined. Better to get right to the Q&A with Norden, since there was a lot to talk about, including the lyrical thematics at play on the songs and the roots of the band’s choice of Sedentary as the album’s title, the sonic changes American Heritage has undergone in the last six years, the process of rounding up all those bassists and much more.

Complete Q&A is after the jump. Please enjoy.

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Let’s say you’re American Heritage. You hail either from Chicago or Gainesville, Georgia, depending on who in the band you are, and you put out an album that gets some pretty sizeable critical response in 2006 called Millenarian on Translation Loss. Two years go by and you decide it’s time to start putting together your next album – but wait, your bass player isn’t with you anymore. Sure there are plenty of bands who go without these days, and with two guitars, you would probably be heavy enough in any case, but some people just like to make things difficult, and apparently you’re that kind of person. Or band.

Instead of going without a low end, which is almost never the right move, or finding a permanent bassist in time to make their new album, Sedentary (also Translation Loss), American Heritage recruited a variety of players from the landscape of modern metal, including such luminaries as Bill Helliher of Mastodon, with whom American Heritage released a split way back when, Rafa Martinez of Black Cobra/Acid King and the ubiquitous Sanford Parker, who also recorded the basic tracks for the three remaining members of American Heritage – guitarist/vocalist Adam Norden, guitarist Scott Shellhammer and drummer Mike Duffy.

It’s a huge project, and with several other outside contributions as well – Lon Hackett who handles bass on opener “City of God” also plays keyboard, Kelliher also rips an added guitar solo on the grinding “Fetal Attraction,” Josh Rosenthal is lead vocalist for the wonderfully titled Martinez-bassed “Morbid Angle,” etc. – it’s a wonder American Heritage came out of it with anything close to a cohesive album. To their credit, and to the credit of Parker who mixed, they did. Norden’s vocals, which are cleaner on Sedentary than they were on Millenarian, are a tying factor, but even more than that, the changes Sedentary presents — there are plenty – are more related to toying with different genres than some kind of tonal inconsistency. Usually something with this many guests involved is either a wreck or a compilation. American Heritage have managed to pull an album out of what must have been a nightmarishly convoluted process, and before any measure is taken of how the thing actually sounds, they have to be commended for that.

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