Published: March 10, 2025 | Last Updated on March 12, 2025, 10:55 AM
Could Rainbows are Free be the quintessential Oklahoma metal band?
They definitely bring a trademark kind of Okie strangeness and a wild-eyed, landlocked derangement to the genre in a way that most other heavy-riffing acts either can’t quite manage or aren’t even attempting. And they most assuredly lean into the dizzying country expanse of the Oklahoma landscape.
All of which is on display on the dense and delirious new “Silver and Gold,” the band’s first new full-length offering of original songs in more than five years, and their first studio album for indie metal label Ripple Music.
That time away from the studio hasn’t been time off, though.
In the years since 2019’s “Head Pains,” the sextet has continued honing their interplay and their bulletproof cohesion through a continuing stream of radically costumed live shows and slowly developing new tracks, and that patience has paid off.
Right out of the gate, they focus on the “psych” part of “psych-metal,” kicking off opening track “Your Girl” with a building, rhythmic ominousness rather than just kicking the door in with big riffs and big announcements.
The track – like so many of the tracks on “Silver and Gold” – begins unfolding quickly until it crashes to life, rising up to meet Brandon Kistler’s singularly pained, wailing vocal.
Every time you think that a song couldn’t possibly rise any further, couldn’t possibly sustain one more textural layer without collapsing in on itself, you’re proven wrong. There’s always a new lead line or synth layer or affected vocal rearing its head around every sharp corner.
The whole record is bursting with bombastic solos, new wave-y synth leads, and the unmistakable theatricality of Kistler and his mutant cabaret vocal persona. And it all combines to carry Rainbows are Free firmly into “glam” territory.
“Silver and Gold” is always skirting the line between glam-rock and doom-metal, like a stoned teenager in ’71 obsessively flipping between “Electric Warrior” and “Master of Reality.”
In fact, the whole existence and sound of Rainbows are Free make for a pretty good argument of just how much sonic attitude and character those two movements really share.
Take the (fantastically titled) “Runnin’ with a Friend of the Devil” for example. A bit less distortion and it could be a Slade hit, a bit slower and it could slot into a Pallbearer record.
There’s something about the band’s open embrace of that strangeness, and their willingness to unleash their weirdo sense of humor that aims the whole record toward some dark surrealism instead of toward the well-worn territories of brutality and intensity that call to most metalheads.
Maybe it’s the alien landscape of the album’s cover or the widescreen reverbs and desert-burned, western-tinged guitars that sweep through repeatedly, but the songs on “Silver and Gold” seem to carry a kind of Jodorowsky-style absurdism powering their heavy metal machine.
Much of that darkness and surrealist approach comes to a head on “Sleep,” probably the album’s most straightforward “doom” track.
Largely developed by guitarist Joey Powell, the song lopes and stomps through a 3/4 rumination on paranoia, insomnia, and creeping societal dread. It explodes in punctuated choruses that see Kistler pleading “we can’t let it break, no it can’t be broke,” a mantra he says is a plea for his children to have a worthwhile world available to them in the future.
It all gives way to “Hide,” the album’s centerpiece both in building intensity and energy and in its momentary showcases for each member throughout, with arpeggiated synths, crushing, battered power chords, fleeting leads, and drummer Bobby Onspaugh running absolutely wild around the kit.
Then there’s the goth-bop of “The Light,” then the off-kilter, rockabilly-metal of “Dirty,” then the jangly, sandblasted acoustics of “Fadeaway” and the rising, darkly epic denouement of “The Gift,” featuring the most electrically experimental and mind-melting of guitarist Richie Tarver’s many solos.
It’s an album that keeps you on your toes and happily cuts a series of neck-breaking turns throughout, but that somehow still sounds exactly like Rainbows are Free on every track.
It’s tough to easily define the band or their sound. It’s easier to think of Rainbows more as an attitude or as a singularly unhinged and psychedelic personality cobbled together from all the varied influences that have funneled through it and from all the sprawling creativity only barely contained within, just like the personality of this state itself.
So yeah, they probably are the quintessential Oklahoman metal band, and “Silver and Gold” is a showcase for exactly why.
“Silver and Gold” by Rainbows are Free is available on streaming services everywhere now from Ripple Music. For more, visit rainbowsarefree.com.
You can find out about local music and performance happenings in the OKC metro weekly in this music column by Brett Fieldcamp. | Brought to you by True Sky Credit Union.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
