Charlotte, North Carolina-based four-piece Cosmic Reaper offered up their self-titled debut just over two months ago, on March 19, through Heavy Psych Sounds. The album is a feast of nod, a celebration of the void, and catchy to boot, taking influence from the swirling lurch that Windhand built from the foundation of Electric Wizard‘s ultra-stoned crush, and bringing both a current of noise and a sense of underlying structure to all that swirling murk, so that even as “Heaven’s Gate” pushes directly out-out-out from where opener “Hellion” leaves off, there’s still a sense of direction amid all the resultant spaciousness.

And so there remains one. Cosmic Reaper‘s Cosmic Reaper — sadly no eponymous track, but maybe next time — runs seven songs and 44 minutes, and is largely unipolar as regards tempo. Sure, there’s enough room for some swing as “Stellar Death” picks up from the opening duo, or later in “Wasteland II” (hey, there’s a video for that song right down there!), but even this is relative to the crawl of “Hellion” or the nine-minute penultimate cut “Planet Eater,” which as something called “Planet Eater” will inevitably do, becomes a focal point. But whether slow or slower, Cosmic Reaper‘s songs by no means lack character. Tonally they are rich in the bass of Garrett Garlington and the guitars of Dillon Prentice and Thad Collis, and as shifts in solos or the level of fuzz bring crescendos like those in the midsection of the aforementioned “Stellar Death,” drummer Jeremy Grobsmith demonstrates malleability in propelling or giving space to what surrounds.

The album takes its time, and that’s to its credit. While the vinyl edition splits up “Wasteland I” and “Wasteland II,” in a linear listen brings that downerdelic instrumental centerpiece and the ensuing rollout of “Wasteland II” together in duly hypnosis-into-slapped-face style, and “Wasteland II” is both the most uptempo inclusion and the heaviest, with layered solos in the back end trading channels over still-massive riffs, doomed right to the finish. With more echo in its vocals and more room to let those echoes flesh out, “Planet Eater” moves along a different edge of dynamic, still well in line tonally with what surrounds, but working in such a way that I’d neither be surprised to find out it was the first song written for the album or the last. In any case, it sounds like it was fun to put together.

Coming right after the “Wasteland” two-parter, it makes one wonder if there isn’t an impulse toward longer-form material that will continue to develop in Cosmic Reaper‘s modus as they go forward — nothing on their four-song 2019 EP, Demon Dance, touched six minutes, though they came close — but one way or the other the sense of bookend with which “Infrasonic” caps, bringing the listener back to the rumbling ground “Hellion” laid out and finishing with a short stretch of the massive stomp the band have kept in their pocket all along, capably wielded, not overused. Maybe that restraint is worth noting as well in terms of potential, that Cosmic Reaper — however familiar their overarching aesthetic may willfully be — aren’t just blindly throwing riffs at each other or their listeners. But the fact that potential itself is a subject at all should be taken as a sign of the self-titled’s various merits and overall cohesion. They don’t sound like a brand new band, and indeed they’re not.

If you haven’t yet dug into Cosmic Reaper, it’s streaming in full at bottom of this post — age of horrors and wonders and all that — and you’ll find the video for “Wasteland II” premiering like two line breaks from here.

So enjoy:

Cosmic Reaper, “Wasteland II” official video premiere

WASTELAND II is a Cosmic Reaper track, taken from their self-titled debut album. The release is out on Heavy Psych Sounds !!!

GRAB YOUR COPY HERE:
https://www.heavypsychsounds.com/shop.htm#HPS158
USA SHOP:
https://www.heavypsychsounds.com/shop-usa.htm

SAYS THE BAND:
“Wasteland II is an anthemic tribute to long nights of vices and the liberating days of the road. With driving riffs, soaring vocals, and explosive solos, it thunders through with a familiar head banging groove of years past. This video is a Kalediscopic Fever dream of exploitation films, Government propaganda and biker gangs. A collaboration between the band and longtime friend and film fanatic Reed Williams!”

Video credits: Reed Williams
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@reel_reedo
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user85686246

COSMIC REAPER IS:
Thad Collis — guitar/vocals
Dillon Prentice — guitar
Garrett Garlington — bass
Jeremy Grobsmith — drums

Cosmic Reaper, Cosmic Reaper (2021)

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Tags: Charlotte, Cosmic Reaper, Cosmic Reaper Self-titled, Heavy Psych Sounds, North Carolina, self-titled

This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2021 at 7:18 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.