Rival Sons

Rival Sons – LIGHTBRINGER (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 33:32 minutes | 695 MB | Genre: Blues Rock, Hard Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Low Country Sound – Atlantic

About the album, guitarist Scott Holiday said, ‘When you do two albums back-to-back like this, there are a lot of things to think about. The first record has to pack enough of a punch and tell enough of a story for the second half to have an even bigger impact. We balanced them out with energy and meaning, but the follow-up always needed to deliver a bigger blow. I think ‘LIGHTBRINGER’ provides this’.

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Rival Sons – Lightbringer (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 00:33:32 minutes | 698 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover

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Rival Sons – Great Western Valkyrie (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 00:47:40 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Blues Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Earache Records Ltd

Robin Everhart, the Rival Sons’ founding bassist, left in late October of 2013, deciding that the grueling rigors of touring weren’t for him. The band replaced him with Dave Beste in time to record the band’s fourth full-length. Once more they enlisted producer Dave Cobb (who helmed the Head Down sessions) and recorded at his Nashville studio. Rival Sons have doubled down on their worship of late-’60s psych, blues-rock, and hard rock because of the lockdown groove in drummer Michael Miley’s interplay with Beste, a much more straight-ahead rock bassist. What’s different is how the band combines these sounds, Led Zeppelin’s pervasive guitar and vocal influence still a primary inspiration, but this is colored also by a love the Jimmy Page-era Yardbirds, the Nazz, the Doors, and the boogie of classic Status Quo. The group has manifested most of these before, but not in this way. In their songwriting and arrangements, they recombine these influences in sometimes startling new ways. Even the most sprawling, psych-oriented tracks have excellent riffs, while most of the hard rockers and boogies contain hooks and multiple textures. Force is never sacrificed. Opening single “Electric Man” is unabashed in its Led Zeppelin IV proclivities, but “Good Things” evokes the Zombies of Odessey and Oracle with harder-edged guitars and fatter drums. “Secret,” led by Beste’s bass throb and Scott Holiday’s thundering guitar vamp, makes room for guest keyboardist Ikey Owens (Mars Volta) on organ. “Open My Eyes” opens with a vamp worthy of Black Sabbath, but it becomes a gritty, near country-rocker with phased drum kit. The transcendent Pete Townshend-esque guitar chords that serve as the intro to “Belle Starr” give way to a crunchy slide riff, then an open, spacious psychedelia. It changes shape several times before the close with a woolly, dirty-assed bassline and Zep-style rhythmic syncopations. The proggy blues in the intro to “Destination on Course” is a fine showcase for Jay Buchanan’s croon atop brooding guitars and a swelling menace in the rhythm section. This holds sway until a female backing chorus (Kristen Rogers) enters, and things come completely off the rails in Wagnerian mind-melting psych. Great Western Valkyrie continues to revel in retro-rock, but it does so with fine songwriting, arrangements, and — above all — taste added to the instrumental firepower. Combined, these strengths make this a full step up from Head Down.

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Rival Sons – Feral Roots (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 47:03 minutes | 1006 MB | Genre: Blues Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Atlantic Records

Rival Sons have announced the release of their highly-anticipated new album. FERAL ROOTS arrives everywhere on January 25th via GRAMMY® Award-winning producer Dave Cobb’s major label imprint Low Country Sound/Atlantic Records. The forthcoming LP is highlighted by the brand new track “Back In The Woods.” Produced by longtime collaborator Cobb at Nashville’s famed RCA Studio A and the equally legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Muscle Shoals, AL, FERAL ROOTS marks Rival Sons’ Low Country Sound/Atlantic Records debut and features cover artwork painted by renowned contemporary artist Martin Wittfooth.

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Rival Sons – DARKFIGHTER (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:38 minutes | 817 MB | Genre: Rock, Blues Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Low Country Sound – Atlantic

Elaborating on the genesis of the album, Buchanan notes, ‘DARKFIGHTER represents the cultural mitosis of isolation, the Pandemic, and the national fabric of the US getting looser and looser. When I say ‘Cultural Mitosis’, there are lines being drawn constantly. We’re so divided, and you can’t step over the lines without offending someone. It certainly informed my writing. We recognized a responsibility to put a good word on people’s ears so there’s a good word coming back on their tongues too. We missed the joy of the live show and that magical interaction. When it was taken from us, that made me want to sing about topics that were important. There are strong themes on this record of loss of identity, preservation of joy, and beholding light and shape again’.

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