Local Label Celebrates Heavy Sounds In San Francisco
By Dave Pehling
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- A Bay Area label that has become a bastion for heavy psychedelic and stoner sounds from here and abroad celebrates with a party featuring a whopping five bands including local favorites Blackwülf, Warcloud and Zed when Ripplefest II takes over Thee Parkside Saturday.
Founded by friends Todd Severin and John Rancik in 2010, the San Ramon-based Ripple Music imprint was an outgrowth of their popular music website the Ripple Effect that focused on lost and obscure hard rock and psychedelic artists. With their collective experience -- Severin had worked as a DJ, while Rancik was the lead singer for '90s San Diego punk/metal band Blind Justice -- the website expanded to include an online radio show, Ripple Radio.
When the pair had an opportunity put out some unissued recordings by forgotten proto-metal pioneers the JTP Scare Band, Severin and Rancik decided to start the label that would follow the path of Frank Kozik's pioneering '90s stoner metal label Man's Ruin Records. The group's 2010 album Acid Blues Is The White Man's Burden would be the first of a growing list of new and reissued fuzztone-laden recordings that Ripple Music has put out in the eight years since then, including albums from established stoner rock outfits Freedom Hawk, Mothership, Gozu, Hornss and Bonehawk.
This marathon gig at Thee Parkside will present four of the label's local bands and one visiting group, Montreal power trio the Hazytones. The line-up also includes the Watchers -- a band featuring members of established Bay Area heavyweights Spiral Arms and Orchid who are set to release their debut full-length album, Black Abyss -- along with hard-grooving veteran San Jose quartet ZED (who released their acclaimed third album Trouble In Eden on the label in 2016).
Filling out the bill are blazing SF band Warcloud, whose self-titled debut from late last year echos the twin-guitar attack of Thin Lizzy and Judas Priest, and accomplished Oakland headbangers Blackwülf, who are preparing to release Sinister Sides, their second sternum-rattling effort on Ripple Music that features guest appearances by legendary doom metal guitarist Geof O'Keefe (a founding member of Pentagram and Bedemon). DJ Rob Metal plays music between bands.
Ripplefest II with Blackwülf
Saturday, February 3, 8 p.m. $10
Thee Parkside
