Bath trio Redshift have cooked up an epically diverse, genre-bending progressive rock meets metal sound that they describe as “eclectic, technical and quirky.”
The trio of Liam Fear (vocals, bass and keyboards), Joshua Boniface (guitar) and Jack Camp (drums) have been friends for more than a decade and had been part of different bands and projects. The band was first formed by Jack and Liam, who went in search of a guitarist and found Josh.
On the sound they’ve crafted since, Liam told us: “I guess we would describe it as fast-paced, ever-changing and stylistically diverse. There are so many different influences between us that slip in as we write our music, creating a both diverse and enjoyably peculiar sound that’s never boring. We want our music to be limitless in what it can be and do our best to project that in our creations.”
Our latest taste of this is the band’s second album Laws Of Entropy, which was released in April. On the album, Liam told us: “We can’t wait to show this one off. When we were recording this album, we were all excited by how well it was coming together. Laws of Entropy will be a much more polished listening experience. It will be heavy, it will be fun, it will be mad and will have a much bigger full sound.”
From it, our first taste was Entropy, which opens up with a jaunty piano jig. That feeds into an opening verse with engaging vocals supported by a lively lick and ends on punchy trumpet notes before diving into wild screamed vocals. Intense rhythmic guitars and drums take over before really cool section of unusual keys give way to powerful guitars. It’s the perfect introduction to Redshift, with bizarrely contrasting sounds somehow combining effortlessly. That includes a wild guitar solo over all manner of random accompaniments before an epic, almost Rush-esque conclusion.
On the track, Liam said: “We had to get Entropy out there first, we just couldn’t hold on to this one. Entropy is the title track, it’s got the heaviness, the technicality, the genre-skipping patchwork that we love to create and a huge sound that we are very proud of. It’s hard to pick any other favourites, but Blueshift may be a contender. You can look forward to that one.” Check out Entropy in this awesome animated video:
The aforementioned Blueshift is just your standard 21-minute album-ending track. It opens up with dramatic guitars and keys that sound like they’re setting up an 80s epic. A light lick takes over and it gradually builds towards big singalong vocals that end on another set of big guitar chords and rolling drums. A funky synth lick takes over alongside awesome rolling guitars, which feed into more intense vocals and palm-muted guitars that flow into little flurries under guttural vocals. And we’re still not one-third of the way through the track! Have we mentioned the word “epic” yet?
There’s plenty more where that came from on the six-track album, including the delicious opener Birth, which begins with a huge driving riff and drums then a funky synth solo before engaging vocals take over. Discovery takes things to a new level in terms of heaviness and technical guitars, while third track Civilisation clocks in at more than 11 minutes long. But we firmly encourage you to take a listen to experience it for yourself.
The Redshift sound has been influenced by the likes of Rush, Dream Theater, Between the Buried and Me and Opeth through to Frank Zappa, Devin Townsend and many more.
And on what inspires them to write music, Liam tells us: “Each of us has always been heavily influenced by the music we grew up with or discovered as we developed our tastes, individually and as a group. We bonded over our love of heavy, progressive and complex music. When we write, we usually take what’s almost a storyboard-like approach to it. We can then think of the feelings we want each song to promote as we listen to help emphasize a point in the story. There aren’t any particular themes that we try to write about, just what influences us at the time, what would be a fun project.”
Expect plenty more from Redshift soon, as the band are always writing and have plans for another video. And Liam adds: “We write and record with close friends and pay our own way, so all of the support of our friends and fans who listen, stream and buy our music means the world to us. They help us fund our projects and the feedback helps us to keep our efforts up. So thank you all for being a part of Redshift and joining in our fun journey.”
You can follow Redshift on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and check out their music on Spotify, Bandcamp and YouTube.
Listen to Redshift and more new bands on our Spotify playlists GigRadar Metal and GigRadar Rock
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