Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

  • Los Angeles, CA
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  • Alternative
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  • 2001
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About Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Official Site: http://blackrebelmotorcycleclub.com/ | @BRMCOfficial

Peter Hayes – Guitar, Bass, Vocals, Harmonica, Keys
Robert Levon Been – Bass, Guitar, Vocals, Piano
Leah Shapiro – Drums, Percussion

Somewhere between the five full-length albums and a decade-long road test across the highways of the world, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club found their way.

Eleven years after bassist Robert Levon Been and guitarist Peter Hayes started playing gigs around their hometown of San Francisco, the duo has now started over, with a new vision, a new drummer, and the gift of a future unknown.

The sound of Beat The Devil’s Tattoo comes from everywhere and nowhere- it draws a map and embarks on a sonic road trip through American music; from howling front porch stomps on the Chattanooga and beer-sloshing Texas roadhouse rockouts, to swaggering proto-punk sneering in NYC’s basement bars.

For six months, Hayes, Been and new drummer Leah Shapiro, holed up in a basement studio together, during one of the coldest winters in recent history. In this house outside Philadelphia —the same place Howl was penned — they built their first album as a new band from the ground up. "It was like a family again, living together and working really closely like that," Been says. "Something happened to us out there though, I'm not sure if we beat back our demons, or if we just let them take us over completely. But strange days make for strange times."

Shapiro replaced longtime BRMC drummer Nick Jago behind the set, bringing a newfound sense of professionalism, which she honed from playing with the Danish rockers, The Raveonettes.

“She knows how to watch when she plays,” Hayes says, “there’s intuition and there’s the ability to watch our body language as we’re really going to dig into something.”

With Shapiro on board, the band recorded in Los Angeles at the Station House, tracking all basic tracks in a shocking four days.

"We wrote over 23 songs for this record and the hardest thing about it was probably narrowing it down to a final 13 track album,” Been says. “There's just a strange effortlessness now, which I haven't felt since we recorded our first album. It's just got that kind of nervous, kind of excited, kind of unsure feeling, where we don't know where it's gonna go next, so everyone just stands out of the way.”

Beat The Devil’s Tattoo stirs with a raw sexual energy, melting down their previous four records, and forging a style that encompasses them all. The firebrand fuzz bass from their first two albums B.R.M.C. and Take Them On, On Your Own emerges on “Shadows Keeper,” and “Aya,” Howl’s acoustic driven, edgy Americana is ever-present on “Long Way Down” and the title track, “Beat the Devil’s Tattoo.”

Like the title of the album, a phrase gleaned from Edgar Allen Poe’s 1839 short story, “The Devil In The Belfry,” BRMC stands on the edge of darkness, but never dives in.

“Leah had given me a book of Poe short stories and I'd immersed myself in it. The one phrase 'Beat The Devils Tattoo' leaped out at me though for some reason. I read up on it and found that it originally meant 'the beat of a drum or a bugle signaling soldiers to return to their camps after dark'. But it's a very old lost phrase. These days, I guess it's used whenever anyone anxiously drums their fingers on a table or taps their foot on the ground incessantly, they're 'beating the devil's tattoo.'"

With songs of self-destruction and redemption, of heartbreak and ecstatic love, Beat The Devil’s Tattoo traverses much emotional ground. Like Poe’s American Gothic style, the album infuses the soaring spirit of Southern folk with lowdown grit of bijou blues. The slide-guitars and tambourine stomp of “River Styx” brings us “to the water’s edge where every sin has been washed away.” The dusty howls opening “Conscience Killer” evoke a fire-and-brimstone preacher leading the choir at an Alabama big-top revival.

The piano piece, “Annabel Lee,” beautifully ends the UK album with the adaptation of Poe’s story of everlasting love beyond the grave.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Like the best balladeers, like Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, and Lou Reed, BRMC, translates feelings into sound, and sound into lyrics that sets off on moody journeys deep into the soul.

“We wouldn’t be in a band if people were saying what was in my head, the way I need it heard,” Hayes says, “The only thing that satisfies inner reconciliation is music, spitting it out, making and creating ourselves.”

BRMC’s ceaseless drive to create, to tell stories of redemption and aching desire, keeps them going. It’s an addiction, an unquenchable thirst appeased only by the undying love of rock and roll.

“To me music connects everyone and everything, that is the light,” Been says, “If we're able to write something, and someone can relate to it, or feel something from it, the light is blinding"
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Music

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  • Berlin (Tess Angus Edit)
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  • Ain't No Easy Way (RCA Version)
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    • Beat The Devil's Tattoo
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    • Let The Day Begin
      http://listen.vo.llnwd.net/g1/4/9/6/1/7/979771694.mp3
    • Fire Walker
      http://listen.vo.llnwd.net/g1/4/9/8/1/7/979771894.mp3
    • Shuffle Your Feet
      http://listen.vo.llnwd.net/g1/7/2/0/1/5/246651027.mp3
    • Returning
      http://listen.vo.llnwd.net/g1/9/9/8/1/7/979771899.mp3
    • Lullaby
      http://listen.vo.llnwd.net/g1/7/5/5/1/7/979771557.mp3

Photos

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  • Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Tessa Angus
  • Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
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    Tessa Angus
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    Virgin

News

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  • Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club gears up for DVD, album
    music.yahoo.com
    part of its 2005 "Howl" album. "We just started writing endlessly, and it kind of took off like ... Black Rebel Motorcycle Club gears up for DVD, albu...
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  • Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
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    due March 9: Beat the Devil's Tattoo, the fifth effort from Jesus and Mary Chain disciples Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Vagrant is responsible for rel...
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  • Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Readies New Album for March 2010
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    : February 26 – Sacramento, Calif. @ Harlow's 27 – Reno, Nev. @ Knitting Factory 28 – Las Vegas, Nev ... Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Readies New Album...
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  • Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
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    prefixmag.com
    say: It's all fun and games until a rock star accidentally throws a water bottle at your bad eye and you have to have ocular surgery.Again. That's wha...
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  • Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
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  • Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Return From Tragedy on New Album
    www.rollingstone.com
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club will release their as-yet-untitled seventh studio album this March. The new record comes three years to the month since Be...
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  • Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Download Free EP From Black Rebel Motorcycle Club | Prefix
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    Tweet It sure feels like it's been longer than three years since Black Rebel Motorcycle Club put out an album. They came around in my town (Portland) ...
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  • Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Recover From Loss on 'Specter at the Feast' - Album Premiere
    www.rollingstone.com
    The Los Angeles rock trio Black Rebel Motorcycle Club poured their hearts into their sixth album, Specter at the Feast, which is set for release on Ma...
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  • Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Recover From Loss on 'Specter at the Feast' - Album Premiere
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    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Bass Drum of Death @ Terminal 5, NYC | Prefix
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Tour Dates

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  • Jun 23 Sunday
    San Francisco, CA, US Slim's
    Buy Ticket
  • Jun 24 Monday
    San Francisco, CA, US Slim's
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  • Jul 3 Wednesday
    Eindhoven, Netherlands De Effenaar
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  • Jul 4 Thursday
    Belfort, France Unknown venue
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  • Jul 4 Thursday
    Werchter, Belgium Werchter Festival
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  • Jul 5 Friday
    Montreux, Switzerland Montreux Jazz Lab
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  • Jul 6 Saturday
    Belfort, France Eurockéennes de Belfort
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  • Jul 9 Tuesday
    Frankfurt, Germany Batschkapp
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  • Jul 10 Wednesday
    Nîmes, France Arènes de Nîmes
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  • Jul 13 Saturday
    Hengelo, Netherlands Metropool
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  • Jul 14 Sunday
    Utrecht, Netherlands Tivoli Oudegracht
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  • Jul 16 Tuesday
    Bologna, Italy Bolognetti Rocks
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  • Jul 17 Wednesday
    Lucca, Italy Lucca Summer Festival
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  • Jul 18 Thursday
    Benicassim, Spain Unknown venue
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  • Aug 23 Friday
    Saint Cloud, France Unknown venue
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  • Aug 29 Thursday
    Zürich, Switzerland Unknown venue
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Discography

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  • Specter at the Feast (2013)
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Specter at the Feast (2013)
    Vagrant
  • Live in London (2011)
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Live in London (2011)
    Cobraside
  • iTunes Live Sessions (2010)
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    iTunes Live Sessions (2010)
    Vagrant
  • Beat the Devil's Tattoo (2010)
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Beat the Devil's Tattoo (2010)
    Vagrant
  • Live (2009)
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Live (2009)
    Vagrant/Abstract Dragon
  • Baby 81 (2007)
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Baby 81 (2007)
    Universal/Island
  • Howl (2005)
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Howl (2005)
    RCA
  • Take Them on Your Own (2003)
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Take Them on Your Own (2003)
    Virgin
  • B.R.M.C. (2000)
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    B.R.M.C. (2000)
    Virgin
  • Six Barrel Shotgun
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Six Barrel Shotgun
    Phantom Import Distribution
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