With Rites & Stories, guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist Rick Shaffer steps deeper into the primal landscape he has cultivated across more than a decade of solo work. The founding member of The Reds returns with his thirteenth album, one that continues his fascination with the Berlin-period rawness of Iggy Pop and David Bowie, yet refuses to simply imitate. Instead, Shaffer assembles a sound world that feels both ancient and futuristic—dense, angular, and utterly uncompromising.
The record opens with Standing in the Shadow, a track that immediately sets the tone with sharp riffs and ghostly echoes that seem to linger just outside of reach. There’s a strange duality at play: the song surges with momentum, yet it is layered in a shimmering haze that keeps it elusive, almost spiritual. That tension—between clarity and murk, force and atmosphere—becomes the guiding principle of the album.
It carries directly into True Religion, which slows the pace but sharpens the focus. Shaffer trades urgency for atmosphere here, letting jagged guitars shimmer against a glassy backdrop. The effect is both menacing and hypnotic, a kind of controlled burn that smolders with aggression beneath the surface. His voice, gritty and confessional, cuts through the haze like someone delivering a sermon at the edge of collapse.
By the time Walks Behind You arrives, the ritualistic qualities of the record have taken root. Its formidable riffs push forward with relentless intent, but the echoes that trail behind give it a haunted quality, as though the song itself is being pursued. Shaffer has a gift for turning riffs into landscapes, and here the guitar work doesn’t just propel the song—it paints the sense of paranoia and shadow that its title suggests.
The mood deepens further with Pleasure, one of the album’s most hypnotic and unnerving pieces. A steady, mid-tempo beat grounds the track, while jagged guitar shards slice across the surface, glinting with an eerie shimmer. Shaffer’s lyrics here are sparse but cutting, evoking the eternal collision between indulgence and regret. His voice, raw with grit and urgency, feels almost too close, like a confession whispered through clenched teeth. The effect is spellbinding, a descent into late-night temptation where thrill and consequence blur.
That shadow lingers as the album shifts into Get It Wrong, a tightly wound piece built on ominous bass lines and razor-sharp guitar treatments. Fragmented and psychedelic, it thrives in its restlessness, refusing easy resolution. Shaffer embraces imperfection here, using distortion and twisted loops to create an intensity that feels ritualistic—repetition not as monotony, but as invocation.
The density continues with Dark Disguise, a song that builds atmosphere gradually. Its jangling guitars weave a trance-like pattern while the sparse vocals leave space for the instrumentation to dominate. Brooding bass lines and slow, pulsing rhythms lend the track a weight that feels subterranean. It’s as if Shaffer is deliberately pulling the listener further underground, deeper into the cavern where the rites are performed.
With Pressure Point, the percussion takes center stage. Cavernous and unrelenting, the beats lock in with fractured guitar treatments, creating an almost psychedelic intensity. This is where the record’s ritualistic theme becomes most palpable; the repetition feels ceremonial, the sonic textures both unsettling and intoxicating. The momentum is undeniable, and by the time it eases into Run To It, the listener is already too far inside the sound to turn away.
That track sharpens the focus again, leaning heavily on riffs that cut like blades through reverberating shadows. Urgency returns in full force, the vocals commanding and raw, driving the song forward like a chase in the dead of night. There’s a primal energy here that recalls the raw power of Iggy Pop, but Shaffer’s delivery carries its own distinctive texture—weathered, desperate, and unflinchingly alive.
The same restless energy surges through Cry For Justice, one of the album’s most emotionally potent moments. The guitars scream with sharp intensity, drenched in cavernous echoes, while the lyrics strike with immediacy. It feels less like a song and more like a demand, a rallying cry delivered from within the shadows. Shaffer’s voice, raw and commanding, becomes the perfect conduit for that plea, embodying both desperation and resolve.
As the album draws to a close, Slow Days offers a shift in trajectory. The pace is more reflective, the guitars twisting into unexpected shapes, creating intrigue rather than assault. Shaffer’s vocals take on new nuance here, shaping the lyrics with tonal creativity that reveals his depth as a performer. It feels like the afterglow of the storm—a moment of contemplation after the relentless sonic barrage, leaving the listener suspended rather than resolved.
What makes Rites & Stories so compelling is the consistency of its immersive world. Every track feels as though it belongs to the same ritual, yet each offers its own variation, its own story. Shaffer’s production values grit over gloss, letting the imperfections serve as part of the fabric rather than something to be scrubbed away. His guitar treatments become atmospheres, his rhythms become ceremonies, and his voice becomes the unrelenting narrator leading us through the shadows.
Lyrically, the album circles themes of decadence, temptation, mortality, and regret. Yet it never romanticizes these subjects. Instead, Shaffer presents them raw and unfiltered, with the honesty of someone who has lived through the chaos rather than merely admired it from afar. This is not nostalgia for rock’s darker past; it is a continuation of it, a reminder that those energies remain alive, still pulsing, still demanding to be heard.
With his thirteenth solo album, Rick Shaffer has proven once again that proto-garage rock is not simply a sound to be revived, but a force to be endured. Rites & Stories out via Tarock Music, is not about retelling the past—it is about surviving it, reshaping it, and letting its echoes bleed into the present. The rites may be unsteady, the stories fragmented, but the music is defiantly alive: dense, dangerous, and unflinchingly human.
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