If there is such a thing as “crisp brutality,” New York’s Restless Spirit fits that band description. It is a power trio with an emphasis in “power,” and the band is bringing that muscle to the Tin Roof in West Ashley on July 10.
If the new live album, The Doomed & The Dead…Live, is any indication, the Tin Roof show should be the kind of all-out blistering assault on the senses that metal fans love. And Restless Spirit is most definitely metal.
Since forming in 2016, Restless Spirit has found a second home in the Southeast. Like most of its tours, the one that brings the band to Tin Roof features dates in Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, Florida and the Carolinas.
“I don’t know what it is,” Restless Spirit singer/guitarist Paul Aloisio said in a recent interview with the Charleston City Paper. “Maybe it’s because we’ve played the Southeast so much, but sometimes I feel like we’re local to the North Carolina/South Carolina area. It feels like a stone’s throw from New York.”
The band’s new live album was recorded last year at the metal-heavy RPM Fest, and the band rages from the start. Aloisio asks the audience if they’re having a good time and then kicks off the set by roaring, “THAT ENDS NOW!”
What follows is a slice of swaggering hard rock that sounds like The Cult and Black Sabbath meeting up for a couple of beers (“Judgment & Exile”), two raging thrash tunes (“All Furies” and “Cascade Immolator”), a progressive metal epic (“Lords Of The New Depression”) and a concluding slow-crawling stoner metal behemoth called “From The Dust Returned.”
It’s all metal, but the band dives into various subgenres with gusto. It’s a trait that Alosio said has been there since the band got started.
“It’s not that I want the song to specifically sound a certain way,” he says. “But when I get in a room with our drummer, we ask ourselves what we’re feeling today. I don’t know how other bands do it, but it’s not like we say, ‘We want to be a doom metal band’ or, ‘We want to be a sludge metal band.’ Whatever comes out is going to come out.”
Bassist Marc Morello and drummer Jon Gusman round out the Restless Spirit lineup. Aloisio said that the trio format is the perfect outlet for its music.
“Selfishly, as a guitar player, it gives me more room to mess around,” he said. “It makes it easier to flow in a more organic and experimental way. I have the luxury of doing whatever I want as long as it serves the song.”
Whatever the approach is, it’s working. Restless Spirit’s last studio album, 2023’s Afterimage, has been streamed more than 1 million times.
“Obviously, to make the purest music, you have to make it for yourself,” Aloisio said. “But you also want people to connect with it, and we’re very lucky in that regard.”
The band has been surprisingly prolific over the last decade, releasing three albums, four EPs and various singles.
“We can’t help it,” Aloisio said of the band’s busy release schedule. “We love playing together and we love writing songs. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, bands were putting out albums every year or every two years. There are a lot of bands that I love now that will go years between records. I always want more. So I like to give our listeners more.”
With the live album on wax, Aloisio said Restless Spirit feels as though it has cleared the decks for a future sound, even if it was unintentional.
“We just started writing our fourth full length album,” he said, “and it’s markedly different from the most recent release. There was a lot of darkness in those first three records, and I feel like I’ve gotten that purged out. Now I want to have more fun. But it wasn’t intentional. Life and circumstances change.”
IF YOU WANT TO GO: Doors open at 7:30 p.m., July 10, Tin Roof, 1117 Magnolia Road, West Ashley. Tickets are $10: charlestontinroof.com
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