If you haven’t already heard of Paul Lewis & Romeo Rage – then you’ve been living under a rock. This band is here and they are here to stay as they channel rocking vibrations through a David Bowie and Prince influence, restlessly blurring the lines between the theatrical, rebellious, freaky and provocative on their unruly new album “Sky’s Rust”.
The album dropped on November 18th via award-winning alternative label Realize Records. Prolific singer/songwriter/producer Paul Lewis, the film composer behind feature films such as Days of Power, combines his eclectic vocal, guitar and keyboard writing style with technical drumming and jazz fusion-inspired John Sanders on drums to create something wholly fresh and greater than the sum of it’s parts.
The album is a full length and automatically, to my ears, I got Meat Puppets vibes. This is a sound that isn’t tapped into that much and it was great to hear it come from a band that I wasn’t too familiar with until this album came out.
Ultimately, this is the sound of a band at the top of their game, doing exactly what they want to do creatively, experimenting freely with the cinematic and gothic while leaving caution to the wind.
John Sanders had a bit to say: “Romeo Rage is what happens when two guys boldly blur several genres and marry West Coast riffs with East Coast edge. The result is a sort of controlled chaos that makes for a unique audio journey.”
The new album comes quickly on the heels of Romeo Rage’s three-song contribution to the soundtrack for the independent feature film “Dark State” which was released in AMC Theatres across the country in 2021. The songs were co-produced with Lewis and Emmy award-winning sound mixer Robert Venable.
This album is a pandemic album and that’s how it was born. Paul Lewis goes into this: “The pandemic shook the world and affected everything that I do, so out of that came most of these tunes. Some of them I had written and hadn’t done anything with until this new idea came. I’ve always wanted to play edgier and darker material yet still having a pop sensibility about the tunes. I found some amazing musicians to play with and now we are ready to bring it.”
What’s even cooler about this record is that Paul stated that a lot of the work came out of dreams that he had.
This album does justice to a sound and anyone who likes the Meat Puppets, Type O Negative, Danzig, or I would even go as far as The Misfits, will surely like this offering.
Stream the full “Sky’s Rust” album on Spotify.
