Double GRAMMY-Award-winning Dave Lombardo, co-founding drummer of Slayer, will release his debut solo album Rites Of Percussion, via Ipecac Recordings on 5 May 2023. The first part of the 13-song collection Journey of the Host has just been released.
Lombardo told MetalTalk that Mike Patton gave him the idea to make a solo record in 1998. “He introduced me to Tito Puente’s Top Percussion album,” Dave says. “I was already familiar with Tito and was a bit shocked that Patton was so musically diverse and that he surrounded himself with musicians of the same mindset. That inspired me. I have had ideas that I’ve recorded on cassette over the years, but Patton kept insisting that I had to do a ‘drum album.’ So, the idea behind the album is years in the making. I just had to find the right time – for me – to do it.”
Dave began working on the album at a time when touring was not possible. “I immediately started working on the record,” he says. “It was one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had. I had my studio, all my drums. Nothing was in storage for once.
“My home became a place where I could be free and creative. On the one hand, the touring part of my livelihood had been taken away, but on the other, I finally had the time to educate myself on different software and recording techniques. It was a very educational and gratifying experience.”
The recording process of the film score-like album had a simple mantra: drums had to be drums. Mixed in early 2022 by Lombardo’s son, David A. Lombardo, the self-produced release features a large concert bass drum, a timpani, a grand piano, and a flock of shakers, maracas, Chinese and symphonic gongs, Native American drums, congas, timbales, bongos, batás, wood blocks, djembes, ibos, darbukas, octobans, cajóns, and cymbals.
Album pre-orders, which include CD, digital, and three vinyl variants (standard cigar smoke, indie-retail exclusive blood sacrifice, and Ipecac exclusive purple haze) can be made at https://davelombardo.lnk.to/ROP.
Rites Of Percussion
1 – Initiatory Madness
2 – Separation From The Sacred
3 – Inner Sanctum
4 – Journey Of The Host
5 – Maunder In Liminality
6 – Despojo
7 – Interfearium
8 – Blood Let
9 – Warpath
10 – Guerrero
11 – Vicissitude
12 – Omiero
13 – Animismo
