Rampancy at Midnight (RaM) is a conceptual project based in Lexington, KY that intertwines and defies genre while blending personal experiences with thought provoking story telling. RaM just released their second 6 track EP entitled “In Which This” on April 28th, 2017. Rampancy at Midnight is one of those rare bands that will have a bigger impact on musicians and indie listeners than the mainstream crowd. In my opinion, that’s the best way to thrive in the music world and the best way to leave it – more appreciation, more dedication, and more intimacy with the fans.
“In Which This” takes you on a trip not unlike a breezy motorcycle ride on a warm summer’s day. From the minute “Evolve” builds up and explodes to a blend of grungy rock riffs and shoegaze vocals, Rampancy at Midnight gives us the full throttle spectrum of what alternative rock music listeners are looking for. Indeed, this record provokes a surprisingly strong range of emotions.
From the petrol-fuelled propulsion of “Rapture” through to the spacey psychedelia of “Colombia” and melodic punk hooks of “Opposition”, Rampancy at Midnight prove to be a square peg within the round hole of the indie music landscape of the 21st Century.
If you are a fan of shoegaze, discordant tortured guitars and atmospheric production, step right up. Production is classic washy atmospheres of layered overdriven guitars and vocals. The vocals are sometimes near-field, then distant, but always compelling.
Keeping ahead of the curve and remaining just as confident.While others similar in genre hide behind their walls of sound and reverb, Rampancy at Midnight embraces the noise, emoting with an extroverted fever that, quite frankly, rocks.
It’s in the way that RaM’s guitars veer in and out of each other, either exploding in grinding fuzz or clean strummed on “Divulgence”, that demonstrates the uniqueness of an artist not afraid of playing music that often oversteps its borders, as it does on “Sociopathic Tendencies”. Where others would lose the skewed melody, cover it up and beat it down with various walls of sound, Rampancy at Midnight set it on a pedestal.
RaM even further separate itself from the crowd, grunging out hard and coarsely laying out a sing-a-long of sorts that contradicts everything that you’d expect from an artist with shoegaze tendencies. That is until you hear the echoing explosions of distorted guitar bouncing around each other.
Rampancy at Midnight pulls you in with the accessibility of alternative rock but keep you sticking around for the caress of their conceptual sound.
In this rare case it can be said that RaM really is trying to reinvent the wheel on “In Which This”, and rather than remain true to any given musical identity they expand their sonic palette and continue to re-imagine what reverb-soaked over-driven guitars sounds can accomplish when framed in an experimental light.
Rampancy at Midnight music is distorted enough to appeal to grunge fans and there are enough dreamy pop hooks to branch out to fans of the shoegazer genre. Not to mention that their sound is both aggressive and standard enough to appeal to hardcore and alternative rock listeners.
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