Photos by Dustin Schneider
Dreadnought, Ruby the Hatchet, and Elder stopped at Tulips in Fort Worth as part of their US Tour on Sunday. After two other sold-out shows in Texas, in Houston and Austin, they played to another packed house before heading out to Albuquerque.
Dreadnought, a five-piece out of Denver, opened the show with ethereal harmonies combined with massive drops and guttural screams. Playing mainly material from their new album, “The Endless”, which comes out on 08/26/2022, guitarist/vocalist Kelly Schilling and keyboardist/vocalist Lauren Vieira had the audience eating from the palms of their hand with their ethereal vocal harmonies that quickly turned to the aforementioned guttural screams at the drop of the hat. Building upon a post-apocalyptic landscape, Dreadnought found their way to intertwine different avenues of music before settling in on a groove that got the crowd warmed up.
Ruby the Hatchet, is another female-fronted, five-piece psychedelic rock band based out of New Jersey, and they were promoting their 4th studio album. “Fear is a Cruel Master” is available for pre-order and if it is anything like their live performance, it will be a psychedelic doom rock masterpiece full of raw energy. Jillian Taylor’s vocals intertwined with the vocals from drummer Owen Stewart were a force to be reckoned with, then you added in guitarist Johnny Scarps, bassist Lake Muir, and organist Sean Hur and you are served wave after wave of fun rocking tunes that each shined in their own way. If you live in the Northeast/New England area, I’d definitely go out and catch this band live if they roll through town.
Finally, to close out this Sunday evening service of excellent psycho-stoner metal was Elder. Unfortatanly, like many bands in our wonderful berg of Fort Worth, Elder released their 5th studio album “Omens” right as covid began and they haven’t been able to tour to support it till now. “Omens” was recorded and mixed at Black Box Studios in France with engineer Peter Deimel (Shellac, dEUS, Motorpsycho) and mastered by Carl Saff in Chicago and the result is a dynamic album that is clear and rich for this genre of music that is typically known for its muddy and dirty sound. The live interpretation of these tracks is just as rich, creating an almost spellbinding trance over the audience as frontman Nick DiSalvo vocals cut in and out of the sonic soundscapes with the precision of a knife. New(ish) guitarist Michael Risberg and new(ish) drummer Georg Edert fit in perfectly with DiSalvo and Chas Mitchell on bass. What they put on display Sunday night was four guys that aren’t being restrained by the limits of fitting into one particular style of metal, instead, they reach out in every direction and grab the parts they enjoy and build massive compositions out of them. Also, as an added bonus, if you are a fan of the German band Kadavar, Elder and Kadavar collaborated on an album “Eldovar – A Story of Darkness & Light” that was recorded while both bands were living in Berlin during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Elder
Ruby The Hatchet
Dreadnought
