Ovtlier
Honing in on a modern sound while consistently setting themselves apart from the mainstream, Ovtlier (pronounced “Outlier”) has prided themselves in creating exemplary rock and metal music backed by a rapidly growing fan-base. Led by enigmatic frontman Joey Arena, Ovtlier has earned more than 3 million views of fan-curated content on YouTube and over 3 million streams on Spotify, in addition to capturing the hearts of over 60K followers online. All of this combined with the band’s ability to sell out shows and engage their audience, Ovtlier has achieved features in major media outlets such as Revolver, Loudwire, Alternative Press, Decibel and ABC News. Continually hitting the Billboard charts, Ovtlier has been able to spread their sound nationwide through constant spins on FM radio and months of regular rotation on SiriusXM Octane- launching them into the forefront of their genre. Ovtlier capitalizes on their songwriting formula to develop a hybrid-like sound, drawing influences from a myriad of rock and metal sub-genre’s to help attract a wide variety of listeners. The band unveils their freedom to create musically through their latest releases; the fiery, high speed “Bulletproof” resides on one end of the Ovtlier spectrum, whereas “All I Need” takes the audience in the opposite, more moderately paced and ballad-esque direction. Regardless, what remains apparent through the band’s entire discography is Arena’s meaningful lyrics, musical prowess and his drive to bring Ovtlier straight to the top.
Wraith
Wraith – Wraith is a blackened speed metal band from Northwest Indiana, currently signed to Prosthetic Records. Known for their high-velocity sound, they blend elements of 80s thrash, punk, and black metal. https://wraith219.bandcamp.com/music WitchTrap – Witchtrap is a Colombian black/thrash metal band formed in 1992 in Medellín by brothers Burning Axe Ripper (vocals/guitar) and Witchhammer (drums). Originally “Dark Millennium,” they shifted to 80s-influenced speed/thrash metal. Known for raw, alcohol-fueled, and evil-themed metal, the trio has released multiple albums and runs Dirty Sound Records. https://witchtrap-official.bandcamp.com/ The Black Moriah – editious, malicious, fiends, the horde of highwaymen ride on! The Black Moriah is influenced by hymns buried deep beneath dried earth, T.B.M. drinks the spirits of past greats Bathory, Kreator, Motorhead, Slayer, Venom, and other Kings as they frequent dens of iniquity, homes of misfortune and girls of ill-repute. https://theblackmoriah.bandcamp.com/ Burial Oath – black/heavy metal est 2015 (ex members of Cloak/Uada) https://burialoath.bandcamp.com/music Ungoliant – Ungoliant is a 4-piece black metal band from Omaha, NE. Formed in 2018, they have been bringing an old-school black metal approach to venues across the Midwest, opening for bands such as Warbringer, Uada, Panzerfaust, Jungle Rot, Hulder, and more. https://ungoliantamerica.bandcamp.com/
Indian Caves
80s Kids
“HOLY JOHN HUGHES THAT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!!” Get ready to turn up the nostalgia and sing your heart out! Synthpop sweethearts Shannon Curtis and Jamie Hill are returning to Reverb Lounge with 80s kids 2 — the second installment of their nationally touring hit side project 80s kids. 80s kids 2 — lovingly referred to by those in the know as “80s kids 2: The Empire Strikes Back” — is a high-octane joyride through the best of 1980s synthpop — tied together with funny, moving stories about growing up in the 80s. From the electrifying beats of Pet Shop Boys and New Order to the heart-on-the-sleeve melodies of OMD and Erasure, this show is a love letter to the decade of iconic anthems and underdog heroes. This dynamic concert-style theater show features all-time favorites from Thompson Twins, Soft Cell, Alphaville, Naked Eyes, The Human League, and many more — delivered in a wildly fun and interactive performance that feels like you’re experiencing them live for the first time. With awesome, authentic sound, amazing immersive video art, killer merch, inclusive energy, and magnetic, joyful stage presence, this hit show is an experience that you don’t want to miss. Get your tickets today! * Freebies at the merch table for people wearing 80s fashion! Live videos and more information: https://80skids.live
Wage War
Leading with an emphasis on quality in everything they do, Nevertel – Jeremy Michael (vocalist), Raul Lopez (rapper/guitarist/producer) and Alec Davis (guitarist) – have honed a distinctly modern genre-blending sound that fuses elements of hip-hop, nu-metal and alternative rock. Touting influences from established acts such as Linkin Park and Bring Me The Horizon, the group draws in listeners with riveting melodic choruses, hip-hop infused verses and bombasticEDM-style breakdowns. Now, after two albums, two EPs, and a slew of singles out in the world, Nevertel has racked up over 60 million global streams to date (and over 900K a week) while fostering an online community of over 600K social media followers. A testament of their dedication to their craft and commitment to their fans, the band has performed at festivals like Welcome To Rockville, seen radio support from SiriusXM and earned recognition across all major DSPs, with a placement on Spotify’s All New Metal, Kickass Metal, and Hard Rock playlists. “Our mission is pretty simple: to make music that saves and inspires people to make great changes in their lives.” While they pour their hearts into their work, at the core of it all, they do it for the tight-knit group of childhood best friends they once were. “If we could inspire that same 13-year-old kid we once were to follow their dreams and chase their passions then I’d say our mission is being accomplished.” — What got out of Orthodox’s A Door Left Open was a capital M Monolithic Metal record, which accomplished its goal of approximating the dread one would feel coming home to a door ajar. The lack of subgenres attached to the overarching weight doesn’t mean there weren’t influences from heavy music’s history, rather that attempting to sum it up would be a hyphenated mess as chaotic as opener “Can You Save Me?” and far less pointed and poignant than the album-ending monologue making up the middle section of closer ‘Will You Hate Me?” Between the album’s poles—start-and-stop metallic hardcore ala Converge and relative calm, almost post- metal-esque diversity (see what we mean about those hyphens?)—the Nashville/Columbusbased quintet have made nu feel new again.It’s at the apex of the densest elements of innovative subgenres like nu metal and metalcore, both which added aggression to softening metals, that Orthodox craft their own take on “The Heaviest Matter of the Universe.” Similar to peers like Knocked Loose, Harms Way and Jesus Piece, the band mutate metal’s most groovy elements into a molten alloy as scalding as it is dense. (That they’re joined by Matt McDougal, Andrew Neufeld and Brann Dailor on guest vocals only adds to the oomph.) In the case of Orthodox, call it “Dread Weight” after the track of the same name, and be prepared to be crushed—as many have through tours with the likes of The Acacia Strain, Stick To Your Guns, Boundaries, Dying Wish and more.From the floor to a massive stage, from hardcore to metal, and everything in between, Orthodox have built a name on fervent, visceral live shows. With their most blunt album, both lyrically and musically, the wrecking ball that is Orthodox is coming to shatter expectations and minds of fans of metal and hardcore alike. Their powerful alloy ensures it doesn’t matter if there was, ahem, A Door Left Open or not, with their latest album, they’ve kicked theirs off its hinges—if not turned itinto dust.
Spiritworld
With Helldorado, the third installment of SPIRITWORLD’s death-western trifecta, chief hombre Stu Folsom takes the listener deeper into a world where the hot desert sun beats down on his singular vision of the American West as a gateway to hell. “It’s a different album than the past two,” says Folsom of the thematic and sonic journey that began with the Las Vegas band’s 2020’s Pagan Rhythms LP and continued with 2022’s Deathwestern. Now the story rides on in a cloud of dust and a spray of blood with his latest offering. Helldorado blasts the Mojave-born bloodlust and stomping, tomahawk riffs SPIRITWORLD won their brutal, horrific vision of the Old West with, while riding straight into macabre Americana. Helldorado not only tightens the reins on SPIRITWORLD’s riff-riding attack that has won the band “most played” stature at Sirius XM’s Liquid Metal, but also looks over its shoulder—cigarillo dangling from a sun-parched lip—at their punk-driven outlaw country origins. Folsom and his gang first assaulted Vegas Elks Lodges in 2017 on a mission to brand country music with a manic singalong energy cultivated over years in the local hardcore scene. “Dwight Yoakam probably meant as much to me growing up as Black Flag or Slayer did,” says Stu. With country in his soul and metal in his veins, Folsom yearned for the power of the riff. This found him teaming with producer/mixer Sam Pura, who has produced all three SPIRITWORLD records, to unleash Pagan Rhythms, first on the tiny independent label Safe Inside Records. The buzzed-about debut caught the eye of Century Media Records, who signed the band and issued the album worldwide a year later. The reaction to the record, which drew comparisons to the likes of Slayer and Integrity, was overwhelming. It was the purity of Folsom’s vision that won raves from the likes of Gary Holt and Max Cavalera of Soulfly, who praised the band on social media. Helldorado is the next chapter of Folsom’s cycle of Western weirdness, drawing inspiration from his own published literary work, Godlessness, a collection of short stories rooted in Lovecraftian horror and Louis L’Amour’s classic tales of the American West. “Stigmata Scars,” featuring additional guitar work by Frédéric Leclercq of Kreator, digs even deeper into SPIRITWORLD’s horrific lyrical vistas. SPIRITWORLD live is where the rubber meets the road for Stu Folsom and crew. Taking the stage in embroidered, rhinestone-studded jackets and Stetson hats, the energized fivesome is literally Elvis’ Wrecking Crew from hell. From their inaugural stint on Decibel Magazine’s branded tour with Obituary and Municipal Waste in early 2022, to North American runs including a co-headline tour with metal legends Kreator and Sepultura, as well as hardcore heroes Stick to Your Guns and European festival appearances at the UK’s Bloodstock Open Air and France’s Hellfest, the band has built a formidable live reputation. “The mentality on some of these tours is literally ripping a page from Ramones or Against Me!—don’t stop, no stage banter, just rip your songs.” One thing’s for sure: SPIRITWORLD is back with an album that is as much Sergio Leone as it is Slayer. When asked to sum up where it’s all going, Stu Folsom steps back, considers the question, and answers plainly: “Straight to hell, my friend. Straight to hell.”
Snake Lucci
Representing Project Be Well and Snake House Records… Snake Lucci presents his MY DARKEST TOUR! featuring Kxng Frxst hitting Omaha, Nebraska on May 14th at Reverb Lounge! Presented by Nice Enough Ent, 93 & Alive, and Hybrid Promotions / Self Made the Label
Mikaela Davis
Every universe begins with a singular point, a quiet corner where instinct speaks loudest, where existential imagination can stretch its limbs. For acclaimed harpist and songwriter Mikaela Davis’ new album, Graceland Way (due TK via Kill Rock Stars), that singularity was a hillside home in Chevy Chase Canyon, a spot nestled in Los Angeles County where time slowed, the world fell away, and Davis could create from a sense of warmth and deep attentiveness. The “canyon country” epic born of that care ties a neo-western future back to the lineage of Laurel Canyon, the mythos of Elvis’s Graceland, and Paul Simon’s restless reinvention—a place where Davis can explore the fragile balance of light and dark, grace and struggle, rose and thorn, as well as the mystical power found at their nexus. The record’s musical big bang originated at the nexus of UHF Studio, where Davis and noted guitarist John Lee Shannon, co-wrote the record and co-produced alongside longtime collaborator Dan Horne. As the album’s story of an unnamed antihero navigating life in a failing world, her harp, his guitar, and their joint melodies weave a mystic depth. That’s immediately evident from the opening track “(Looking Through) Rose Colored Glasses”, a harp glissando burst functioning like a blissful wormhole to a new universe where dark Western tones come aided by Kurt G. Johnson’s pedal steel guitar and transformative harmonies from guest vocalists Madison Cunningham and Tim Heidecker. But even in this pained origin story, Davis’ glittering, opalescent voice and evocative harp find a depth of beauty. That duality is then immediately challenged in “Nothin’s On The Radio”, where the antihero arrives in a city devoid of meaning, the dystopia of modern homogenized radio writ large. “It already feels dystopic living in a world today where radio stations are all owned by a handful of corporations, all playing the same artists. Gone are the days when the radio was a way to bring people together, to amplify the voices of freaks and weirdos from all corners of the world,” she says. “I was fortunate to grow up in the last years of the golden age of FM radio, and being able to tune into this magical world far beyond my own was a transformative experience. Hearing artists like Sheryl Crow and Vanessa Carlton coming through the car stereo is what made me want to write songs and play music in the first place.” As the album progresses and the story continues, Davis and her compatriots explore magic and mysticism on “11:11” and the haunting darkness of “Mizmoon”. Cass McCombs wrote the latter, rattling percussion and Davis’ harp low end giving way to slippery shadows of violin. “When Cass first sent over the track, it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard,” Davis says. “The music and lyrics create such an ominous mood and I could imagine how the harp would carry the song right away.” Elsewhere, Wednesday vocalist Karly Hartzman contributes to “Junk Love”, an exploration of knowingly filling an empty space with meaningless physicality. Across Graceland Way’s, Davis’ harp masterfully powers the wide variety of soundscapes, taking on an ecstatic range of emotional color. “At the end of the journey, the place you were destined for all along isn’t even a place, it’s a state of mind: Graceland Way,” Davis says. “It’s all interconnected and the universe balances itself. You need the dark to see the light, and the most beauty usually happens where the two meet.”
Belles
Dave’s Cosmic Birthday Bash
