This February, Ripple Music will blaze a trail into the realm of progressive doom with the signing of veteran San Franciscan metallers, The Ghost Next Door.

Founded by Gary Wendt, singer and former student of legend Joe Satriani, the idea for The Ghost Next Door grew out of the discovery of an abandoned acoustic guitar and a name inspired by a nearby haunted house.

As a founding member of crossover legends Sacrilege BC and alt-metal champions Release, Wendt partied hard through that infamous Bay Area music scene in the 1980s. After spending a year recording and touring with Skinlab he left soon after to embark on the development of his own musical vehicle. With no members and no music, the shrewd recruitment of guitarist Aaron Asghari, bassist Noah Whitfield, and drummer Sebastien Castelain, yielded a unique pool of influences from across the modern musical spectrum. The band soon found themselves marrying the dark melancholy of ’80s/’90s alternative rock with the aggression and drive of Bay Area metal (Exodus, Testament), and in doing so offered a diverse range of styles and influences from punk, thrash, jazz, and progressive and modern rock. Deftly topped off by brutal and abrasively honest lyrics, on stage is where the band really come into their own and show an undeniable compulsion to create and perform their expressive take on metal. As Wendt explains, “We’re not interested in trends. A song is born from a single idea, but always mixed with some alternative sensibilities. Fusion, extreme, shoegaze, thrash – we write the unexpected.”

Following the critical success of their debut album, released in 2015 on the Belgian label Mausoleum Records, the band immediately set to work on their follow-up, A Feast For The Sixth Sense, which gets itself an official worldwide release on 8th February 2019 through Ripple Music.

Stream and share new song ‘American Nightmare’ by The Ghost Next Door – https://soundcloud.com/ripple-music/ghost-next-door-american-nightmare

Pre-order the album now at www.ripple-music.com

The Ghost Next Door on Facebook | Web | Twitter | Instagram

Ripple Music is thrilled to announce the release of Awakened From The Tomb…,the debut album from fledgling young doom raiders, Witchers Creed.

Founded in Katrineholm, Sweden in 2016 by guitarist Filip Andersson, bassist Emil Bjällerhag and drummer Charlie Rangstedt, while invoking the enduring sounds of acts like Trouble, Witchfinder General and Candlemass, the band are in fact one of the youngest groups to peddle their riffs amidst the current crop of Swedish Doom Metal musicals.

To go back even further to 2011, Filip and Charlie both met in seventh grade and formed a band called Illusion, inspired by cult 70s rockers November. Sharing their love of rock and metal with everyone in earshot, the pair soon recruited close friend and German classmate Emil Bjällerhag to sing lead vocals. Sadly, things went south for the ambitious young band in 2015 when they lost their drummer Leo Karlsson to personal issues, but the core of Illusion remained, and the trio talked long and hard about the formation of a new band. A new undertaking, similar in style but even heavier, meaner. They all loved Black Sabbath and that ’70s hard rock sound, along with ’80s metal and early psychedelia. As soon as the band left high school in late 2016, Witcher’s Creed was born.

There was no time to lose.

Following the release of their first demo EP in 2017 the band scored praise from across the world and within a matter of months had released a second EP, gained an invitation to major rock festival in the Ukraine and shared stages with fellow countrymen, Hypnos. Less than a year ago – shortly after coming to the attention of the prodigious record label Ripple Music at RippleFest Sweden II – the band entered Sunlight Studio, the legendary cradle of the Swedish Death Metal sound to record their debut album. Make no mistake, things move fast when you’re that good and you better believe that Witchers Creed are legends in the making. Catch them now as they step out of the grave, because who knows where 2019 will lead them.

Awakened From The Tomb… is officially released on 22nd February 2019 on Ripple Music but you can stream and share new song ‘Monolith’ ahead of it release, below:

Pre-order the album now at www.ripple-music.com

Witchers Creed on Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter

AVER on Bandcamp | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Ripple Music is thrilled to announce that its first official release of 2019 will be Orbis Majora, the brand-new album from one of the boldest and brightest new bands to emerge from the southern hemisphere in recent years; Australian space rockers, AVER.

Following on from the release of Nadir in 2015, an album that produced more than its fair share of online fanfare and dedicated followers in the stoner/psych community, Orbis Majora will no doubt prove itself to be one of the most exciting and distinctive records of 2019. Fearlessly taking their music exactly where it needs to go and packing enough technical nous and talent to power an exploratory vessel of sound and substance, the album propels listeners through soaring instrumentals (‘Feeding the Sun’), heavy psychedelia (‘Hemp Fandango’) and spine-crushing progressive cadences. Like a torrent of celestial hail dancing around the inside of your skull, AVER are weighted somewhere between the worlds, galaxies and supernovae of stoner metal and space rock.

For the quartet – who originally formed on the Northern shores of Sydney back in 2008 – their signing to the Californian label heralds yet another stellar addition to the ever-growing Ripple Music Family, and the beginning of a journey out of the underground and into the void.

Orbis Majora by AVER will be officially released worldwide on 18th January 2019 on Ripple Music. Stream and share new song ‘Feeding the Sun’ below.

Pre-order the album at www.ripple-music.com