The Wheel Workers take us on a pulsating prog rock journey with ‘Fine Time (Live)’!
Texan underground Indie music outfit The Wheel Workers peel back the layers of misinformation, subversion and manipulation by the man-made machine of war in blistering fashion. There’s always something exciting about a group that bravely chooses to highlight the raw immediacy of their live sound. And that’s exactly what their latest EP, “Live From The Attic” promises. Intimate, unpolished and immensely engaging. Think of RATM, Radiohead and Porcupine Tree. There’s something special brewing here. And the timing couldn’t be any better.
Where’s here, you ask? From the confines of their Houston rehearsal space, the attic from which many a Wheel Worker tune has taken origin. Like with the best of live performances, we’re treated to an opening of dissonant interferences and crippling uncertainity. Warped voices distort any sense of reality. Crashing cymbals lead into a pulsating distortion riff opening.
The sheer pull-push momentum generated between the workers hits you like a heady breeze, threatening to rage even further. The emotional tone is one of pure chaos, raw and brilliantly controlled.
Soulful vocals croon of the tolls of war, questioning its morality. Lines like, ‘Off to fight a rich man’s war, watch the poor die in the streets’ state brutally of the real cost of today’s global conflicts. It seems like all of these man-made affrontations have but the one certainity – The rich getting richer, riding high off market gains and the poor, well… you know what happens to them. The Wheel Workers hold nothing back to emphasize the dark, mind-bogglingly ironic ways in which wars expunge themselves.
‘Fine Time (Live)’ boasts of gripping guitar riffs and high-intensity tempos. Blaring guitar tones swell and crescendo emphatically, amplifying the sense of anger against the war machine and all those who profit from it. The track’s enigmatically shifts in whirlpool-esque grunge sections with the sarcastic refrain, ‘Such a fine time’ echoing loud.
The Wheel Workers’s message is loud and clear. Delivered in enraging, edgy, purposeful prose.
The current lineup features founder, lead singer, and multi-instrumentalist Steven Higginbotham, alongside guitarist and keyboardist Craig Wilkins, keyboardist and vocalist Erin Rodgers, bassist Zeek Garcia, and drummer Kevin Radomski.
