Written by: Dave Cantrell

One month past the release of their self-titled debut LP’s first single “Black Summer,” The Red Step, a band comprised of singer/guitarist Nathaniel and members of Belgrade’s high-powered alt-garage band Kazna za uši – bassist Rudolf Cibulski, Boris Eftovski keyboards, and Vladimir Markoski on drums (the latter two already current members of BHP) – along with London cellist Sarah Jane Seatherton, return with powerful new single “Reset.” Bringing a gritty, determined and anxious vibe to the fore, the track, right down to its title, could not have a more timely resonance, dropping as it is on November 9th, 2020 (which isn’t to mention one of the song’s jump-out lyric snippets “I can’t breathe“). While the arc of the message within doesn’t fully tip its hand, the fact that it’s both oblique and direct in a single stroke only makes the narrative all that much more compelling, makes it, in fact, a single stroke of genius. Beyond and behind the vocal, “Reset,” musically, past the more ragged, more aggressive “Stockholm” riff it appropriately opens with, presents like a pre-death rattle Mark Lanegan fronting Th’ Faith Healers, flashing both that band’s latent, pushing post-punk dynamic and a pure driving rock’n’roll classicism (witness the organ during the first break and/or helping lift the track toward its emphatic conclusion). It is, in a word, brilliant, and what we in the business like to call a ‘storming gem,’ one that has us damn near frothing for the arrival of The Red Step entire. [which arrives via Chicago label Pravda Records December 11th – ed.]