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Editor's note: KSL.com does a weekly feature on local musicians/bands in the community. If you have an up-and-coming band/musician in mind, feel free to email your submission to ddewey@ksl.com. Please include a contact email for the artist, if available. SALT LAKE CITY — Good things happen when you work hard. Just ask Salt Lake City rockers The New Low.
After going through a bad breakup with their former band, Fletcher Howell, Garrett Garfield and Chris Kim decided to keep pursuing their musical vision. Along with Cory Beaver, the trio formed The New Low and hasn’t looked back.
Through its demos and live performance, the alt-metal band quickly caught the attention of Razor & Tie and in the summer of 2016, the record company released The New Low’s debut album “Continuance.”
The album is incredibly heavy, with churning guitars and ferocious vocal breakdowns. Despite the record’s aggression, however, it is still very accessible thanks to the band’s uncanny knack for a great hook and its willingness to get vulnerable. Amidst rockers like “Get What You Give” and “Not Afraid,” The New Low throws in the beautiful ballad “Start Over” and the piano interlude “Momento Mori.”
The band’s love of mixing extreme heaviness with heart-on-sleeve emotion is also abundantly clear on its cover of Adele’s “Hello.”
“We try to keep the covers to a minimum, and the only songs we really choose to cover are songs that have an emotional impact on us,” Garfield said. “When we do cover songs, we try and take that emotion and enhance it in our own way.”
Taking the show on the road ===========================The band continues to grow its fan base the old-fashioned way — on the road. To promote the new record, the band played 20 dates on last summer’s Warped Tour.
The annual traveling festival is often called “punk rock summer camp,” where the bands all hang out and goof off together. But the tour is far from glamorous.
“It was definitely punk rock in the sense of dirty, loud, and sweaty,” Garfield explained. “We had a blast, though. It was cool to play with so many bands we grew up listening to.”
Though Garfield said much of each day was spent with “a whole lot of Chipotle, gym, and mindless scrolling on our phones,” once the band hit the stage, all of the boredom quickly melted away in the summer heat.
“(The crowds) couldn't have been better. With us releasing our record on Warped Tour, we had no idea what to expect. It was cool to see the crowds grow every single day. Nothing is more gratifying as an artist than to see and hear people singing words you wrote right back to you.”
Spending so much time on the road can be a grind, but it’s only made the band stronger as a unit.
“Touring is far from glamorous or comfortable, so it really reminds you of how much we all love what we do,” Garfield said. “Musically and personally, touring inevitably makes your band grow or die. Glad to say we've been growing.”
Keeping an eye on Salt Lake City ================================Even as The New Low gains popularity, the band hasn’t forgotten those who helped them in Salt Lake City on the way up.
“I remember being the young kid opening the bigger local shows and having no idea what I was doing. I'll always appreciate the more experienced people in the scene who were patient, supportive and kind to me along the way — The Used, Neon Trees, The Trademark, John Allred to name a few,” Garfield said.
The New Low is also keeping its eyes on local up-and-comers The Aces. “It's been cool to watch them develop and grow,” Garfield said. “I remember being 19 watching this all-girl junior high pop rock band who absolutely crushed it. Happy for their success, and if you haven't heard them you should definitely go listen.”
What’s next for the band?
After a year of promoting “Continuance,” The New Low has earned some well-deserved downtime, but that doesn’t mean the band is sitting still.
“We’re currently working on some things we can't really talk about, but we have a bunch of new things rolling out early next year,” Garfield said cryptically.
While you wait for the band to make its super-secret announcements, give its debut album another spin and keep an eye on the New Low’s Facebook page for news.
