![]() You Are Here is out 5/13 via Hells Headbangers. Listen.Ġ4/23 – Philadelphia, PA Millcreek Tavern We’ve got the tour dates and details of the new album below, as well as one of its songs for you to stream it’s called “The Last Night,” and it’s so, so great. High Spirits are set to release a new LP, You Are Here, in May it was performed and recorded entirely by Black, but he’ll be taking a full band out to tour behind it. But while Black is an obsessive historian and sonic perfectionist, he’s also a hell of a songwriter: His songs are focused, engaging, and insanely catchy. And every detail is spot on: the thin instrumental tones, the simple yet timeless song structures, the high-pitched melodic vocal attack. Here Black, finds his influence at the exact point before feelgood metal became a joke, before Poison and Warrant ruined it for everyone, when bands like Kix and Ratt were considered (and in fact were) every bit as unassailably great as Judas Priest and AC/DC. ![]() And High Spirits are Black’s feelgood metal band, the one that would have scored a drag-race scene in a slob comedy circa 1983. Black’s ear for sound - and more importantly, his ability to produce (or reproduce) the sound he’s after - is almost without peer.Įach of Black’s musical iterations has its own identity, but each is also a lovingly crafted extension of a bygone era of metal (mostly circa the early to mid ’80s): Superchrist belong to the same rugged, drunken New Wave Of British Heavy Metal school that produced Saxon and Motörhead Dawnbringer combine the melodic, anthemic, and progressive tendencies of Iron Maiden circa Piece Of Mind and Powerslave with those same tendencies as manifested in the music of Swedish black metal pioneers Bathory during that band’s viking period. It’s meticulously detailed, though not the way, like, Steely Dan records are meticulously detailed. 04 Reminding You Of Me 05 The Last Night 06 Can You Hear Me 07 Gone to Pieces 08 I Will Run 09 High Spirits High Spirits tour dates: 04/18 Hamtramck, MI. Because Black’s music absolutely feels to me like the work a genius might produce. Those are three pretty great bands in fact, Dawnbringer released our second-favorite metal album of 2012 (and for that matter, our sixth-favorite metal album of 2010), and High Spirits’ last release, the 2013 EP, was featured in our metal column, the Black Market, last April.īlack’s nickname is “The Professor,” and I’ve heard from people who know him that he’s literally a genius, and while I have no idea if that claim is true, I like to believe it just the same. Maybe even the Kinks, since the cut 'high spirits' borrows/steals from the huge protometal riff that makes 'you really got me' such a driving, pummeling, absolute rocknroll song.The guy behind High Spirits, Chicago resident Chris Black, is also the guy behind Superchrist and Dawnbringer. So you can add a bit of Maiden and Thin Lizzy to that reference list (make no mistake, the twin axe attack kills every time!). But with a certain respect for whatever it is that makes heavy metal a musical style for total outsiders (well, not anymore, but right now i'm in an 80's frame of mind. BUT something funny happened while i kept revisiting the album, trying to find its use in my stoner rock/krautrock/punkrock/psychedelic 2014 world: the songs stuck in my memory- like good Dokken (haha, never thought i would actually write something like that!), like classic Scorpions, like an American metal radio- obsessed Judas Priest. it sounded too easy, like a parody of stadium hard rock, which i guess isn't actually far off the mark. but hell, I mean, this is the same guy that creates they might epic n' stoner modern metallic onslaught that is Dawnbringer, so 'You Are Here' sort of threw me for a loop. I still think the drums are kinda sloppy, but in a sense such a fact betters this record- there's no double bass, and i should be thankful since i stopped liking metal when it became too technical (people were sacrificing good, creative melodies or riffs for fast feet and masturbatory fingers). my first impression was that this project was lacking something, energy, maybe- or better drumming. all those great new bands are total retro worship, but done the right way, out of sheer passion and love for the sounds of yesteryear.Īlong comes High Spirits. ![]() ![]() Incredible how i still get the chills when i find a slab of metal that takes me back to the mid-80's- look at Ranger, Enforcer, Noctum, etc.
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