Photo by Jimmy Fontaine

White Reaper’s new album, Asking for a Ride, is going to be the year’s first great rock ‘n roll album, and here’s hoping it blows the Louisville band up as big as those other punks headed to huger stages, such as Turnstile and Higher Power. Early singles in the fuzzed out power-pop perfection of “Pages” and the neon ‘80s rock of “Fog Machine” very much indicated that, but its latest preview “Pink Slip” is the punctuation, with the listen hashing through a driving jam that swerves between punk-pop, melodic hardcore and alt-rock that makes more sense as to why they picked bands like Militarie Gun, Narrow Head and Mamalarkie as support for their upcoming winter tour. “Hard to believe us when we grow up so slow,” sings guitarist and vocalist Tony Esposito. It’s taken them some time to get here, but being late hits all the marks right now.

Edit & Analog VFX by: Harry Steel

White Reaper’s Asking for a Ride will be released January 27th on Elektra Records.