Posted in Whathaveyou on February 25th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Last Spring, when Philadelphia’s High Reeper released their second album, Higher Reeper (review here), they subsequently took off on a European tour that included stops at Desertfest, Maximum Festival and many more besides. It would seem losing a guitarist and an intervening year haven’t dulled the band’s ability to use their time well, as this Spring they’ll do an efficient US tour that touches both coasts, starts at SXSW and includes two stops at Heavy Psych Sounds Fest in California.
They’ll of course also play New England Stoner & Doom Fest 3 in May in Connecticut, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they organized more touring around that, since the only real East Coast stop here is Brooklyn (still counts), but either way, it’s a pretty impressive amount of ground to cover in the time they’re doing it. Note also they’re meeting up with Lord Dying in Chicago. That’s a good night to leave the house.
Dates follow, as per the PR wire:
High Reeper Announces U.S. Tour Dates
Philadelphia Psych-Metal Band to Perform at SXSW Music Festival, Heavy Psych Sounds Fests in Los Angeles, San Francisco as Part of Spring Tour Run
Philadelphia psych-metal unit High Reeper has announced U.S. tour dates in support of its latest LP ‘Higher Reeper’ (Heavy Psych Sounds). The two week trek will launch on March 19 in Austin, TX as part of the 2020 SXSW Music Festival and run through April 4 in Brooklyn, NY.
As part of the spring tour, High Reeper will perform as part of the recently-announced Heavy Psych Sounds festival shows in San Francisco (March 27) and Los Angeles (March 28). The curated west coast shows will spotlight an exclusive selection of Italian independent record label Heavy Psych Sounds’ blue-chip roster, including live sets from acts such as ex-Kyuss musician Brant Bjork, and Yawning Man, as well as special guests Earthless, Danava and more.
High Reeper tour dates:
March 19 Austin, TX The Far Out Lounge (as part of SXSW) March 20 Arlington, TX Division Brewing March 21 Lafayette, LA Freetown Boom Boom Room March 22 Houston, TX Rudyard’s March 24 Phoenix, AZ Palo Verde Lounge March 25 Las Vegas, NV Bunkhouse March 26 Reno, NV Shea’s Tavern March 27 San Francisco, CA Rickshaw Stop (as part of Heavy Psych Sounds Fest) March 28 Los Angeles, CA The Moroccan Lounge (as part of Heavy Psych Sounds Fest) March 30 Denver, CO Hi Dive March 31 Omaha, NE Lookout Lounge April 1 Chicago, IL Reggie’s (w/Lord Dying) April 2 Pittsburgh, PA Gooski’s April 3 Columbus, OH Ace of Cups April 4 Brooklyn, NY Knitting Factory
High Reeper features vocalist Zach Thomas, guitarist Pat Daly, bassist Shane Trimble and drummer Justin DiPinto (ex-Malevolent Creation).
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 8th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Crypt Trip and High Reeper both toured Europe this past Spring, the former in March/April and the latter in April/May. Crypt Trip played Roadburn, High Reeper played Desertfest in London. The way I see the dates, the US-based Heavy Psych Sounds labelmates missed each other by all of five days in terms of intercontinental travel, and as apparently both acts left some unfinished business abroad, it seems only reasonable they’d head back over in good company. They’ll both take part in their label’s festival in Rome, Italy, and Innsbruck, Austria, as well as Desertfest Belgium and a host of other sweet-looking gigs, and because the astounding coincidences keep piling up, they both go supporting killer 2019 releases, as High Reeper‘s Higher Reeper (review here) and Crypt Trip‘s Haze County (review here) both came out this Spring. Go figure.
Still some dates TBA in the UK (that’s the new “Anarchy in the UK,” btw) here, so keep an eye out, but here’s what’s been announced:
*** HIGH REEPER & CRYPT TRIP European Fall Tour 2019 ***
We are so happy to present a very special combo tour. Our beloved HIGH REEPER and Crypt Trip will smash Europe together this Fall playing in Italy, Slovenia, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria and UK. A lot of single shows but also great festivals such as Desertfest Belgium, Heavy Psych Sounds Fest // Roma and Heavy Psych Sounds Fest IBK | Conan, Black Rainbows, more !!!
HIGH REEPER & CRYPT TRIP EU Fall Tour 2019
11.10.2019 IT Pescara-Scumm 12.10.2019 IT Roma-Traffic, Heavy Psych Sounds Fest 13.10.2019 IT Cecina- Fuzz n Roll, Ritmi 14.10.2019 IT Zerobranco-Altroquando 15.10.2019 IT Trieste-El Covo De Jameson 16.10.2019 SL Ljubljana-Channel Zero 18.10.2019 DE Siegen-Freak Sabbath Vol 5 19.10.2019 DE Oldenburg-MTS Record Shop 20.10.2019 BE Antwerp-Desertfest Belgium 21.10.2019 FR Lille 22.10.2019 FR Nantes-La Scene Michelet 23.10.2019 FR Toulouse-Usine a Musique 24.10.2019 SP Bilbao-Satelite T 25.10.2019 SP Aviles-Factoria Cultural 26.10.2019 SP Madrid-Wurlitzer Ballroom 27.10.2019 PT Porto-Barracuda 28.10.2019 PT Lisbon-Sabotage Club 30.10.2019 SP Barcelona-Rocksound 31.10.2019 CH Olten-Coq D’or 01.11.2019 AT Innsbruck-PMK Heavy Psych Sounds Fest 02.11.2019 CH Winterthur-Gaswerk 04.11.2019 AT Koln-MTC* 05.11.2019 UK* 06.11.2019 UK* 07.11.2019 UK* 08.11.2019 UK Bristol* 09.11.2019 UK London-Black Heart*
HIGH REEPER ONLY*
HIGH REEPER are: Zach Tomas – Vocals Shane Trimble – Bass Pat Dealy – Guitars Andrew Price – Guitars Justin Di Pinto – Drums
CRYPT TRIP are: Ryan Lee – Vocals, Guitar Sam Bryant – Bass Cameron Martin – Drums
Posted in Reviews on March 20th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Day three. Cruisin’. Oh, another 10 reviews to write? Yeah, no problem. I’m on it.
Okay, maybe a little less that and a little more be banging my head against the wall of sound, but the point is we — you and I — move forward anyhow. The Quarterly Review continues today with the third batch, which at the end will bring us to the halfway point, 30 of the total 60 records done, and that always feels like an occasion. Also helps that it’s a pretty good batch of stuff, so let’s not waste time with formalities, right?
Quarterly Review #21-30:
11PARANOIAS, Asterismal
It’s a freakout, but not the good kind. More like a panic attack happening in slow motion on another dimensional plane. The masters of murk, 11PARANOIAS return through their own Ritual Productions imprint with Asterismal, collecting/conjuring upwards of nine tracks and 73 minutes of material depending on in which format one encounters it. The core of the outing is the six-song/45-minute vinyl edition, and that’s plenty fucked enough, to be honest, as bassist/vocalist Adam Richardson (Ramesses), guitarist Mike Vest (Bong) and drummer Nathan Perrier (ex-Capricorns) unfurl a grim psychedelic fog across songs like opener “Loss Portal” and tap into The Heads-style swirl on “Bloodless Crush” only to turn it malevolent in the process. The 12-minute “Quantitative Immortalities” finds Vest in the forward position as it summarizes the stretch of doom, psych, and bizarre atmosphere that’s utterly 11PARANOIAS‘ own, and that’s before you get into the experimental and sometimes caustic work on the CD/digital-only “Acoustic Mirror” (10:35) and “Acoustic Mirror II” (15:08), which both rise from minimalist bass to become a willful test of endurance only a select few will pass. All the better.
Was there ever any doubt Robot Lords of Tokyo could do it on their own? Not if you ever listened to Robot Lords of Tokyo, there wasn’t. The Columbus, Ohio-based outfit built a reputation in the earlier part of the decade by bringing guests onto their records, but their new EP and first outing in half a decade, Rise Robot Rise, features five songs of just the band itself, with founders Rick Ritzler (drums) and Paul Jones (vocals) joined by bassist Joe Viers and guitarists Steve Theado and Beau VanBibber. Their last outing was the 2013 full-length Virtue and Vice (review here), but they seem in “In the Shadows” and “Looking for the Sun” to come into their own with Jones bringing a John Bush-type edge to the hook of “Looking for the Sun” and echoing out a bit on centerpiece “Hell Camino,” which boasts not the band’s first nod to Clutch. With opener “In the Shadows” setting the tone for an undercurrent of metal, “My Aching Eyes” and “Terminus” pay that off without losing their rock edge and thereby highlight just how much force has always been in the core lineup to start with.
Issued by The Sign Records, the self-titled debut from Sweden’s The Riven (also discussed here) hones in on classic heavy rock but never actually quite tips all the way into vintage-ism. It sounds like a minor distinction until you put the record on and hear the acoustic guitar lines deep in the mix of “Far Beyond” or the echoing vocal layers in the second half of the later “Fortune Teller” and realize that The Riven are outright refusing to sacrifice audio fidelity for aesthetic. There’s no shortage of shuffle to be had, rest assured, but The Riven are less concerned with aping traditionalism than updating it, and while they’re not the first to do so, the fact that on their first record they’re already working to put their stamp on the established genre parameters bodes well, as does the bluesy float of “I Remember” and the mellow vibing early in “Finnish Woods.”
Philadelphia exports High Reeper offer their second full-length through Heavy Psych Sounds in Higher Reeper, upping the stakes from their 2017 self-titled debut (review here) in more than just title. In the intervening two years, the five-piece have toured extensively, and it shows in the pacing and general craft of the eight songs/38 minutes here, from the perfectly-timed nod at the end of “Buried Alive” to the face-slap proto-trash riff that starts the subsequent “Bring the Dead,” from the mountaintop echoes of “Obsidian Peaks” (note the “Hole in the Sky” riff rearing its head) to the howling roll through “Plague Hag” and into six-minute closer “Barbarian,” as High Reeper hone elements of doom to go with their biker rock sleaze. Stellar guitar is a running theme beginning with opener “Eternal Leviathan,” and Higher Reeper quickly proves that if you thought the debut had potential, you were right.
if the 6:40 album opener “Teenage Hitchhiker” from Brujas del Sol‘s Kozmik Artifactz-delivered II makes anything plain, it’s that the songs that follow on the seven-track/43-minute outing are going to pay attention to texture. Still about half-instrumental, the Columbus, Ohio, four-piece veer from that modus with “Sisterlace,” the New Wave-y “Fringe of Senility,” the delightfully dream-toned “White Lights,” and the final Floydian section of closer “Spiritus,” adding vocals for the first time and leaving one wondering what took them so long. Nonetheless, the winding lines and later subtly furious drums of “Sea Rage” and the scorching leads of the penultimate “Polara” bring the proggy mindset of the band that much more forward, and if II is transitional, well, it was going to be anyway, because a band like this never stops growing or challenging themselves. They certainly do here, and the results are an accomplishment more than worth continuing to build upon.
The centerpiece of Dead Witches‘ sophomore album, The Final Exorcism, is a play on ’60s psych-garage-folk that asks “When Do the Dead See the Sun?,” and the rest of the LP that surrounds provides the answer: The sun isn’t showing up anytime soon, for the dead or otherwise. After issuing their first full-length, Ouija (discussed here), in 2017, the multinational horror-cinema doomers brought aboard vocalist Soozi Chameleone alongside drummer Mark Greening (Ramesses, ex-Electric Wizard), bassist Carl Geary and guitarist Oliver Irongiant, and one might be tempted to think of The Final Exorcism as a kind of second debut were it not for the fact that it’s so cohesive in its approach. With Greening‘s swinging march at the foundation, cuts like the title-track and “The Church by the Sea” stomp out thick-toned and grainy organic creep, plundering through the cacophonous “Lay Demon” en route to the abyssal plod of “Fear the Priest” at the end, fearsome in purpose and realization and hopefully not at all “final.” Like any good horror franchise, there’s always room for another sequel.
It was hard to know where Automaton were headed after they remixed their debut EP, Echoes of Mount Ida (review here), and released it in LP format with two additional tracks. The original version was raw and weighted, the remix spacious and psychedelic. With TALOS, their first proper long-player (on Sound Effect Records), they answer the question with seven songs/48 minutes of expansive and richly atmospheric post-metal, seeming to take from all sides and shift their focus between crushing with dense tones on 11-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) “Trapped in Darkness,” as well as the frantically drummed “Automaton Marching,” “The Punisher” or the end stage of “Talos Awakens” and honing more of a varied and atmospheric approach throughout the sample-laced “Giant of Steel,” the drifting “Submerged Again” and the minimalist acoustic-led closer “Epilogue,” all the while donning both an overarching concept and a new level of production value to bolster their presentation. It is a significant step forward on multiple fronts.
Raging and experimental, the rumble-laden Barcelona duo Llord make their full-length debut on Féretro Records with Cumbria, which culls together five punishing-but-still-atmospheric tracks of plod and drive as bassist Aris and drummer David share vocal duties and bludgeoning responsibilities alike. Ill-intentioned from the get-go with the two-minute “Adtrita Sententia,” Cumbria unfurls its 29-minute run like a descent into low-end madness, varying speed and the amount of samples involved and bringing in some guest gralla on “Brega” and closer “Kendal/Crewe,” but finding itself in a consistent tonal mire all the same, shouts reverberating upward from it as through trying to claw their way up during the collapse of earth beneath their feet. It is brutal — an extreme vision of atmospheric sludge that makes the concept of a guitar riffing overtop seem like an indulgence that would only dull the impact of the proceedings as they are, which is formidable.
I can’t claim to be an expert on the ways of Britpunk classic or modern, but UK swagger-purveyors Sweet Jonny weave a heaping dose of snearing attitude into their self-titled, self-release debut album’s 12 tracks, and it comes set up next to a garage rock fuckall that isn’t necessarily contradicted by the actual tightness of the songwriting, given the context in which they’re working. “American Psycho,” well, that’s about American Psycho. “Sick in the Summer?” Well, guess that could be taken multiple ways, but somebody’s sick in any case. You see where this is going, but Sweet Jonny bring character and addled-punk charm to their storytelling lyrics and barebones arrangements of fucked-up guitar, bass and drums. I don’t know what the punkers are into these days, but the vibe here is rude in the classic sense and they bring a good time feel to “Superpunch” and “It Matters Not” — which stretches past the four-minute mark(!) — so what the hell? I’m up for something different.
If the approval stamp of Nasoni Records isn’t enough to get you on board — and it should be, frankly — the Sabbathian lowercase-‘g’ ghost rock Warp proffer on their self-titled debut is bound to turn heads among the converted. The Tel Aviv-based outfit tear through eight tracks in a crisp, bitingly fuzzed 28 minutes, taking on classic boogie and doom alike before they’re even through opener “Wretched.” They get bonus points for calling their noise interlude “‘Confusion Will Be My Epitaph’ Will Be My Epitaph,’ as well as for the shuffle of “Gone Man” that precedes it and the stomp of “Intoxication” that comes after, the latter a rhythmic complement to the central progression of second cut “Into My Life,” which only departs that snare-snare-snare to soar for a dual-layered solo. Hard not to dig the space-punk edge of “Hey Little Rich Boy II” and the throttled-back stoner nod of closer “Enter the Void,” which is done in under five minutes and still finds room for the album’s best stop-and-crash. Fucking a.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 8th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Last year, Philadelphia heavy rockers High Reeper went to Europe and toured in Spring around a swing through Desertfest Berlin. It seems only fair that in 2019 they’d go back for another month and hit up CANDLEMASS REVIEW London as well. Heavy Psych Sounds is taking preorders as of now for their new album, Higher Reeper, and will have it out on March 22 — they’ll be at Maximum Fest in Italy that night — and in addition to Desertfest, they’re also set to play Esbjerg Fuzztival in Denmark on May 11. With a heaping portion of shows in Germany and Italy, it should be a killer tour all the way around, and as High Reeper are quickly making themselves veterans of the European circuit, no doubt they’ll find welcome on this return trip. They’ve got a poster and everything.
The PR wire brought that and the accompanying dates:
*** HIGH REEPER – EUROPEAN TOUR 2019 ***
We are very happy to announce that our beloved HIGH REEPER are gonna smash Europe next Spring. DON’T MISS THEM !!!
HIGH REEPER will present their upcoming album HIGHER REEEPER that will be released on March 22nd via Heavy Psych Sounds Records.
Formed in 2016, High Reeper is made up of Zach Thomas, Justin Di Pinto, Andrew Price, Pat Daly and Shane Trimble. Originally started as just a studio band, it rapidly became apparent that these songs were meant to be heard live and loud. The band made their debut in the Philly/DE stoner rock scene in early 2017 with success which was followed up by the recording of their self-titled debut in May. With a sound deeply rooted in modern stoner rock while still giving a nod to the earliest Sabbath records, HighReeper’s first offering is driven by pounding rhythms, thick guitars and soaring, screeching vocals.
For their second record, the addition of Di Pinto on drums helped focus their sound in an even more powerful direction. The result is a new record with riffs that are even heavier than before that explore new directions, including the ballad “Apocalypse Hymn”. After a successful 2018 European tour that included Desertfest Berlin, High Reeper Will once again tour Europe in 2019 visiting ten countries as well as an appearance at Desertfest London.
HIGH REEPER EUROPEAN TOUR 2019 18.04.2019 IT Pescara-Scumm 19.04.2019 IT Cecina-Spazio Live Ritmi 20.04.2019 IT Parma-Splinter 21.04.2019 IT Verona 22.04.2019 IT Zerobranco-Maximum Fest 23.04.2019 IT Torino-Blah Blah 24.04.2019 FR Chambery-Brin Du Zinc 25.04.2019 CH Martigny-Sunset Bar 26.04.2019 CH Oberentfelden-Borom Pom Pom 27.04.2019 DE Kempten-13th Floor Kulturetage 28.04.2019 AT Salzburg-Rockhouse 29.04.2019 IT Trieste 30.04.2019 AT Bludenz-Villa K 01.05.2019 DE Augsburg-City Club 02.05.2019 DE Tubingen-Goldene Zeiten 03.05.2019 DE Mannheim-7er 04.05.2019 BE Liege-La Zone 05.05.2019 UK London-Desert Fest 07.05.2019 DE Frankfurt-DKK 08.05.2019 DE Oldenburg-Mts Records 09.05.2019 DK Copenhagen-Lygtens Kro 10.05.2019 SW Malmoe-Plan B 11.05.2019 DK Esbjerg-Esbjerg Fuzzfest 12.05.2019 DE Berlin-Toast Hawaii 13.05.2019 DE Leipzig-Black Label 14.05.2019 DE Erfurt tba 15.05.2019 DE Dresda-Chemo 16.05.2019 AT Wien-Kramladen 17.05.2019 AT Innsbruck-PMK 18.05.2019 CH Altdorf-Vogelslang
HIGH REEPER are: Zach Tomas – Vocals Shane Trimble – Bass Pat Dealy – Guitars Andrew Price – Guitars Justin Di Pinto – Drums
