…is a stoner/blues rock power trio from Marburg, Germany. The band is known for their tight live performances, their creative mixing of genres – and as the loudest band in town. The three experienced musicians found each other in 2012 while studying and initially started the project as a hobby and an escape from the everyday grind. But the project quickly developed a life of its own: After two EPs and countless gigs, the successful first album, „Tales of Cloud Forest,“ was released in 2016. In their early work, the band took us through dreams of an easier life (Carpenter of Tripolis EP, 2013), alternative universes where biologically altered apes rule (Humanzee EP, 2015), and the story of the aging regent Raphael Monkeyfitzgeralt II (Tales of Cloud Forest, 2016). In the following years, however, the band was drawn back to reality. On the “High & Dry” EP (2018), the first socio-political tones already sounded through and they became a cornerstone of their second LP „We the Living“ (2019). Which was a reckoning with an overburdened performance society. In these years of upheaval, many personal themes also found their way into the songs.
After founding member Vincent Krause left the band in 2019, the remaining trio of Nico Gehle, Lukas Plümpe and Frank Eckerle had to reinvent themselves. Apewards captured their search for a new identity as a trio in the two EP’s Peaks Vol. I (2020) and II (2022). In the process, the influences of blues and stoner rock receded further and further, while fuzz-distorted guitars and psych-rock influences became ever more central building blocks.
In the summer of 2022, Apewards locked themselves in at the unique Studio Red Roof Loftsound to record their first album in the new-old formation. Together with producer Matt Korr (Tiamat, Daily Thompson, Knights of the Realm), they agreed on a „direct-to-tape“ approach. The nine songs were recorded live and all amps, microphones and effects were selected in advance and magnetized to tape along with the performance. The result is a sound that hums and lives – where you can literally hear the creaking of the beams of the recording room and feel the warmth of the glowing tubes. Musically, the band has not let itself be limited by genre boundaries. And so each song is its own and individual piece of the puzzle, which as a whole results in a coherent composition.
Apewards 