User:Reverend Kuzz/sandbox

Reap the Light, a groove/heavy metal band hailing from the United States, stands out with its distinctive fusion of power metal, melodic death metal, and traditional heavy metal, creating a sound that is uniquely its own.

2020–2022: Formation and debut album
Reap the Light is a band formed in 2020 by the core duo Reverend Kuzz (real name Gary Hickman) and Orion Hellraiser. The band started out as just a music project to create a song or two during COVID but grew into something much more. Rev K started out as a writer publishing The Light Reaper Series (apocalyptic military horror) but wanted to combine his love of music with his writing. The search for the right music partner brought him in contact with various talented artists, but none of them seemed to click. A mindless click onto a website put him face to face with Orion Hellraiser’s music. Reaching out, Rev K and Orion wrote Fade to Black as their first song. Nathalie Astrada provided the vocals. Not a cover of Metallica’s, Fade to Black, the name association did bring about some exposure. The process worked so well that the two wrote a second song, Deliver Hell. As the process seemed so seamless, both decided to write an entire album together, which was Deliver Hell. Released in December 2021, the album was mixed at Hexen Studios and all the songs featured a different vocalist Reap the Light collaborated with.

After the successful release of the first album, the duo decided to take a risk and reach out to some familiar voices. The gamble paid off and two amazing collaborations were created. In May of 2022 RTL collaborated with American heavy metal singer Tim “Ripper” Owens (former lead singer of Judas Priest, Iced Earth, and present singer for KK’s Priest) on the song Back to Bedlam. In October of that same year, RTL collaborated with Laura Guldemond on the song, Isolate (Sloth). This was the first song for their second album, The Seven Deadly Sins.

After disagreements with the direction of the next album along with busy work schedules and personal issues, Rev K and Orion decided to work on other projects and walked away from Reap the Light in December 2022. This left The Seven Deadly Sins album incomplete and was shelved.

2023–2024: Formation and moving forward
Feeling that he wasn’t done with Reap the Light, Rev K searched for another music partner. After an exhaustive journey, fate led him to Josh Williams. Josh Williams, a musician, composer, and producer from South Africa, instantly gelled with Rev K in creating music together. At the beginning of his musical journey, Josh was heavily inspired by old-school metal and metalcore. Now driven by a love for modern progressive metal production and innovative creative exploration, Josh brought new life to their music.

In April 2023, Reap the Light released its first song in six months, the first collaboration between Rev K and Josh. Continuing with the concept album The Seven Deadly Sins, the band released Spread the Pain (Wrath). May 2023 brought new guitarist, Harry Combrinck into the band. Wanting to thump a little more on bass, Rev K thought it would be refreshing to bring in another young guitar player. Also from South Africa, Harry brought a significant amount of talent and musicianship to Reap the Light.

Up to this point, RTL had brought in different session drummers to record but never felt synergy with any of them. That was until Rev K saw Nicole Trinchero playing drums on Youtube. Absolutely blown away, he reached out and asked if Nicole would agree to perform drums on their next song. She agreed and immediately clicked with the band. A couple of weeks later, she was asked to perform on another song and was offered the chance to join RTL as their new drummer. She agreed to both. Not wanting to rest and lose momentum, the duo wrote Desires of this World (Envy). They felt this song needed a dynamic vocalist. After reaching out to another powerhouse in the industry, RTL was blessed to have Militia Vox (collaborations with Rob Halford, Dee Snyder, Phil Anselmo, and others) perform the vocals and, together, release the song in August 2023. RTL’s luck continued as they acquired the vocal talents of Māra Lisenko for their song, Fool the Day (Pride), which was released in September 2023.

Lady Luck smiled on RTL again with the opportunity to collaborate with Jennifer Gruber (from the band Fireborn). The song, Betrayal was released in December 2023.

Now firing on all cylinders, the band felt something was still missing. For the first album and a few songs into the second, RTL collaborated with multiple vocalists to create an individual signature to each song. Wanting more consistency to better establish the band's identity, RTL began the search for a permanent vocalist that lasted several months. After receiving over (15) auditions, RTL began the arduous task of scrutinizing some extremely talented singers to narrow down the field. This required all band members to review the vocal samples multiple times. When the entire process was done, RTL came to a unanimous decision to offer the job to a phenomenal female lead vocalist named Melani Hess.

Present: Work to complete the next album
With the members set, RTL now set out to finish The Seven Deadly Sins (SDS) album. SDS is a concept album based on the influence of the Seven Deadly Sins which is to include instrumentals and narrations.