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Rainbows are Free is a doom metal outfit from Norman, Oklahoma. They’ve taken a good dosage of the blues and they draw inspiration from the sounds of archaic metal bands of the seventies - true disciples of heavy devil music. One can easily draw parallels to Sabbath, Cream, Pentagram, Hawkwind, etc. This EP features four well crafted tunes that leave you curious to hear what they’re recording right now.

On the first song “Are You dead ?” the singer shines with his haunting vocal contribution. The guitars deftly shift from groovy southern-fried pull-off licks to Sabbath-esque staccato rhythms. “Bloodcano” has an interesting credenza. Starting at the halfway point the singer starts raving, then the song culminates with a fierce guitar solo. Slamming waves of molten guitar magma, racing towards the shore, hungry for steamed trout and beluga. The last song “Crystal Ball” sounds like a long lost SST-era Soundgarden track. All in all, it’s a good preview of an up and coming stoner band in the Midwest.

Reviewed by Thunder Horse

From chaos comes beauty, from emotion comes madness, and from structure comes those who strive to deny it. So is Rainbows Are Free, forever the sculptors of anarchic magnificence, the ushers of insuppressible fury, and the wielders of the mighty power of rock. On their debut, self-titled EP the elegance that lies behind the distortion is as undeniable as the precision that flows through their instrumentation like lighting through a telephone line, lustily anticipating the melting of your ears. Brandon Kistler’s howling vocals call down the moon while Richie Tarver’s righteous guitar commands it to give you nightmares, and Justin Gallas’ simply flawless drumming makes me wonder why the hell he ever wasted his time not bringing down the hammer of Thor in an indie-rock band. Guitar work on songs “Bloodcano” and “Are You Dead” make them viable candidates for the next installment of Guitar Hero, and the progression of “Crystal Ball” would make Tom Morello proud. This album awakens the spirits of metal that have lain dormant within all rock fans since the 1980’s and screams alongside them. You heard it here first, rock is back.

Reviewed by Graham Lee Brewer

Interesting choice in names for this five piece from Oklahoma, but don’t let it throw you because this band has an interesting sound for a very overdone genre (Heavy 70’s influenced rock with elements of doom and metal). It’s hard to pin down exactly what makes this stand out from the crowd (along with Stone Axe, I’ve been lucky with review material quality lately!) because their biggest advantage is an over all vibe (well that and some serious bite and fire to the guitar). The overall feel that I get from this ep is kind of the inverse of the one I got from first album Abdullah...there is a grittiness and edginess that is hard to pin down, kind of like walking through a summer field toward a farmhouse, all should be peaceful and tranquil, but the hairs on the back of your neck are up and there is a palpable vibe of wrongness and evil. Opener “Are You Dead” comes ambling out, at first fairly generic, but quickly brings a disturbing ambiance first noticed in the vocals…something is just not right here and I don’t mean in a musical sense, but in a “I would not want to be lost in the countryside with this guy around” sense. There is nothing overtly gruff or angry in the vocal tone, just disturbing. The guitar work deserves mention for a feel of bite and edge and emphatic, forceful, but not overplayed soloing (a trend that will continue throughout the ep). Next up is “Bloodcano”, which is probably my favorite track here. More “in your face” right from the gate, it continues all its predecessor’s traits in a far heavier and more aggressive fashion. This one contains enough good riffs to make a few solid metal songs from. “Like A River We Roll” comes close to giving me a struggle with elements of generic mediocrity, but is redeemed by some spirited, spot on guitar work of both the soloing and “making great use of simple pummeling riffing” variety and the fact that it actually gets better as it moves along. Closer “Crystal Ball” sounds just like Mother Love Bone if they’d been smoking pot and dropping brown acid instead of doing smack and that doesn’t work out badly at all. Good groove, intermittent heaviness and a somewhat disorienting amorphous menace…all in all a nice little dose of dark, spinning target-eyed swagger to wrap up the ep. This was quite a pleasant surprise. I’m still not sure the name is a good idea, but the music is certainly in one of the higher percentiles of its chosen class. If the above sounds like your cup of tea get to e-mailing because I have a feeling my review didn’t quite do this justice.

Reviewed by Michael Ballue