I’ll never forget the first time I saw RIG TIME! My ska band was playing a DIY festival in Fort Wayne. It was one of those days where everyone in the room was either playing in a band, watching the merch table, or helping with the festival. As disappointing as these shows might seem, there’s a sort of camaraderie that forms between the acts, almost like a group of painters sharing what they’ve been working on.

RIG TIME! had already grabbed attention with their impressive merch booth, which included a combo TV/VCR playing some 80s movie (Cannonball Run maybe?). But when they took the stage, jaws dropped. The husband-wife two-piece seemed unassuming at the merch booth, but on stage among the eponymous rigs—drummer/vocalist Bryan Fleming’s massive kit augmented by synths and samplers and Rebecca Fleming’s seven-string guitar run through a pedalboard that would make most shoegazers blush and an array of enormous amp cabs—they became monsters.

Their new EP, Reborn, captures every detail of the monstrous heaviness I experienced that day (and every other time I’ve seen them since).

RIG TIME! plays with a passion that seems to exist at the center of all heavy music. Their palette uses broad strokes of hardcore, straightedge punk, doom metal, thrash, sludge, and even moments of industrial. These genre lines often feel so rigid and tribalistic—just imagine Minor Threat fans and Cult of Luna fans mingling at a party—but here, those sounds weave effortlessly, concerned only with making the heaviest noise possible.

At least that’s their only sonic concern—lyrically, RIG TIME! wears their ethics on their sleeves. The record is filled with benedictions to clean living, DIY ethics, and a fierce passion for all-ages shows. The end of “Manifesto” plays a sample of a frontman going on a diatribe about bar shows, ending with the line, “Rock and roll shouldn’t be dictated by clubs that want to sell drinks.” On the crushing “Clean,” Bryan recounts the deaths of his father and brother at the hands of suicide, asserting his own commitment to live a better life than the example he was shown, screaming, “I will remain clean” over a dissonant guitar line.

It’s impressively heavy stuff—both sonically and lyrically. Its gravity is strong enough that it twists time around itself, feeling much longer than its fifteen minutes, sort of like a musical version of that planet in Interstellar where each second that passes is a full day on Earth. Potenetial spoilers for Interstellar. But Reborn is more than worth getting lost in time for. It’s a massive statement that cements RIG TIME!’s place in the heavy DIY scene.

Reborn is out July 29th through State of Mind Recordings.

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