From Portland, Oregon, it’s time to put Last Giant on your music radar.
Last Giant is on the cusp of releasing their 4th studio album, Monuments, on June 9th and now is the perfect time to discover the three piece band.
While the band started demoing in early 2021 prior to their release of Live from the Hallowed Halls, a personal tragedy derailed the trio from living in the same zip code. Not to be deterred, ring leader, RFK Heise wrote and honed the songs that would be Monuments while living throughout the Northwest and Southern California. He found inspiration on not having a consistent home and being a stranger in constantly strange circumstances.
Perseverance drove the band and they rejoined in early 2022 with longtime drummer Matt Wiles and bassist Palmer Cloud on board. The three started going through a year’s worth of material and reworked songs together as a team and wrote new songs together as well.
In the fall of 2022, the 5 month arduous process of recording the album would find Last Giant in Echo Echo Studios with Adam Pike helming the engineering of Monuments. In what could be seen as a comedy of errors, on the first day of recording, the vintage mixing console and amplifier blew up, but this only drove the band to keep going.
In the words of the US Marines – adapt, overcome, improvise.
Last Giant not only adapted, they overcame the situation by improvising with what they had – the patched together equipment and still had the drum and bass tracks intact.
Having formed in 2014, Last Giant has always been plagued with situations that challenged the band’s desire to play music. They have been featured in films and television, and were MTV’s indie video winner.
It just seems that all roads leading to Monuments wanted to test the trio and on the album, the band says,
Everything about this album is a stamp in time, it is about personal, social, and economic struggle as well as love and the hope needed to persevere. It is the album we are most proud of not only sonically but because of the challenges we had to overcome to complete our mission and survive. It mimics life on this planet at this time, it all feels connected.
As of writing this piece, there is one song available to hear from Monuments.
“Hell on Burnside” is a monster of a song with wonderful wailing guitars, driving drums, and a rumbling bass. The bonus is that the song is fast paced and the music is infectious. It makes one want to get in a car, push the pedal to the floor, and race down the barren blacktop.
Having had a sneak listen to Monuments, I can confirm, the band has defeated all brick walls that popped up along their two year journey to make Monuments happen. (We’ll have an album review in due course.) It’s going to be a glorious journey for fans.
Until then, listen to “Hell on Burnside” above or Live from the Hallowed Halls.
