Blacktop Mojo and Shaman's Harvest will be coming to the UK on a very eagerly anticipated and long awaited CO - HEADLINE tour and have announced additional tour dates!
Following the success of 'Burn The Ships' in 2017 and their cover of the Aerosmith classic 'Dream On' (which has reached 31 million views) and the hit singles “Where the Wind Blows”, “Underneath” and “It Won’t Last”; Blacktop Mojo will be touring their new album “Pollen” featuring the singles “As The Light Fades”, “Like Wild Horses”, and “Red Enough”.
"Playing the UK has always been a bucket list goal for our band. To be able to cross that goal off of our list with our good friends in Shaman's Harvest there too, is like being told that not only did you win a brand-new car, but there is a big suitcase full of money in the back seat."
- Matt James, Blacktop Mojo
Shaman’s Harvest first hit single 'Dragonfly' released in 2009 reached #16 on Billboard. In early 2010, Shaman's Harvest recorded "Broken Dreams" as the theme song for wrestler Drew McIntyre of the WWE. They continued that relationship, supplying "End of Days" as the entrance track for Wade Barrett. In 2014 the band released the album Smokin' Hearts & Broken Guns featuring the cover of Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana” and the hit single "In Chains", reached #12 on Billboard and spent 22 weeks there, their highest peaking single, in addition to spending four months in the Top 10 of iTunes.
"For more than a decade now a bucket list item for the band has been to get to the UK and Ireland for a run of shows. Typically you wait to go over with a band that’s already drawing crowds and we’ve come close a few times but they always seemed to fall through in the final hour. It got us wondering if we could potentially do this thing ourselves and who would be a great partner to run with. Over a 3 hour conversation with some of the guys in Blacktop Mojo, and a few glasses of liquid courage, we realized both bands were bobbing in the same dingy so why not try to bring this package over. With great risk and all that. I’ve not been this excited to play our brand of rock n roll in a long time."
- Nathan Hunt, Shaman's Harvest
"Being a rock band for 25+ years is almost unthinkable. But here we are. A lot of what keeps the fire burning are those bucket list moments that happen along the way. This opportunity to tour the UK and Ireland along side our talented friends in Black Top Mojo is one of those moments. It’s About Time we teamed up to make this dream a reality."
- Josh Hamler, Shaman's Harvest
Tour Dates
UK:05/03/25 - Bristol, Fleece
Bristol Tickets 06/03/25 - Southampton, The 1865
Southampton Tickets 07/03/25 - London, O2 Academy Islington
London Tickets
15/03/25 - Sheffield, Corporation
08/03/25 - Birmingham, O2 Institute2
Birmingham Tickets 12/03/25 - Manchester, Rebellion
Manchester Tickets 13/03/25 - Glasgow, Cathouse
Glasgow Tickets 14/03/25 - Newcastle, Anarchy Brew
Newcastle Tickets 19/03/25 - Belfast, Limelight 2
Belfast Tickets
Additional UK dates:
23/03/25 – Swansea, Sin City
26/03/25 – Buckley, The Tivoli
27/03/25 – Derby, Hairy Dog
28/03/25 – Norwich, The Waterfront
29/03/25 – Brighton, The Arch
Ireland:
20/03/25 - Dublin, The Academy
Dublin Tickets 21/03/25 - Cork, Cyprus Avenue
Cork Tickets
"This was the hardest record we've ever made, on every level," says Nathan Hunt, referring to Shaman's Harvest's seventh LP.
The storyline seems obvious: The Missouri hard-rockers assembled this project during a global pandemic that debilitated the entire music industry. "Hard" has kind of been universal lately. But the road to Rebelator was even rockier than the band expected.
After a couple gruelling years of touring behind their last album, 2017's Red Hands Black Deeds, the band were creatively and personally drained. "You try writing on the road, maybe go to the back of the bus and come up with an idea," Hunt says. "But it's hard to be inspired when you're tired. We were like, 'Let's just take the time off we need to make the record.' We didn't want to half-ass it."
The quartet—Hunt, guitarists Josh Hamler and Derrick Shipp, drummer Adam Zemanek—hit the reset button hard, clearing out six months for demo construction at their Jefferson City rehearsal space.
The last two albums were hits with a combined 190 million streams between them. So, the band wanted a focus - the new album. The process was fairly haphazard at first, as they tried to regain their footing. With everyone on-hand, they'd all wake up and try to churn up ideas—though it was slow going for a bit. "We'd just sit there and noodle until the spark [was lit]," Hunt admits.
An early breakthrough was "Wishing Well," a signature rocker that pairs a detuned metal chug with a twangy, soaring chorus and subtle, yet eyebrow-raising, flourishes like fingerpicked acoustic guitar and experimental vocal effects. The ideas just kept flowing from there, encouraged by producer Kile Odell, who joined them for a month.
“Bird Dog" sprouted into a desert wasteland atmosphere of mouth harp, group percussion and deep, growling vocals. "There's a black bird, perched upon a black dog, and they're plottin' your demise," Hunt nonchalantly purrs. He calls the final result a "weird mixture of things," blending its dust-blown textures with bits of Metallica and Queens of the Stone Age—the perfect backdrop for his almost post-apocalyptic lyrics. "It's definitely a cinematic thing," he says. "In my head, I was envisioning a lot of these small towns—like a railroad town or a farm town where people don't want to farm anymore. And it just goes to shit, and then you have the opioids come in, and everyone becomes a zombie."
"Voices" has a graceful balance of light and shade; the band instantly knew they'd written one of their best. But every creative step seemed to be hampered by an outside distraction—or even an act of God.
“A tornado ripped through our town, 2 miles from our studio, leveling everything in its path” recalls guitarist Josh Hamler. “Luckily, no one was killed. Everything can be rebuilt, but we completely lost our creative vibe following the tragic event”.
"There was so much stop and go," adds Hunt. "There was a flood. We'd have something scheduled, so we'd focus and be locked down for like a month at a time. Then somebody would have to go home, or we'd have a fucking tornado. Then it would be three weeks later before we'd start up again. We'd get a few songs down the road, and we'd have to stop."
“Or we'd run out of money," Hamler adds with a laugh. "It was like Murphy's law at one point—like, Jesus, what else is going to go wrong in the making of this record?"
In keeping with the spirit of those last three albums, the band aimed to, in Hunt's words, "de-genre-fy" their music—aiming beyond the contemporary rock-metal formula to add sublet arrangement quirks. "Lilith" is like a jigsaw puzzle of influences, pairing an Allman Brothers-style slide guitar with a distorted, drop-tuning riff and a tender piano outro. "That song, in particular, has a Southern rock vibe in the slide, but there's also an industrial electronic feel in the percussion," Hunt says.
"We don't want to feel limited when we're in the studio," Hamler interjects. "Otherwise, how are you going to get anyone to pay attention these days?" Hunt adds. "Or even get yourself to pay attention?"
In March 2021, Hunt had to make a life-changing decision whether to amputate his leg or not.
Let's rewind a moment.
Working in construction a decade ago, Hunt excavated an army base site when the edge gave way. He crashed 20ft to the bottom, crushing his ankle. Years of surgery followed, slowly, the leg below the knee was rebuilt. "I'd get healed up only to realise the problem was worse off," he remembers. Eventually, a hospital bed was brought into his home, and he filled his days writing.
As he began to walk again, he was diagnosed with cancer brought on by a rare autoimmune disease. "It didn't take long to realise I would never again support the family with construction, so I just went headlong into making music," he reflects. "Some dark stuff came from that period. I feel as a man you can't really express that loneliness, so I'd put it in melody," he says. This fed into 2014's Smokin' Hearts & Broken Guns. "It's something I felt I could tap into for the writing of Rebelator."
He recovered from cancer, but the leg got worse. Prolific on the road, nightly, they prowled stages on their relentless touring; Nickelback, Cheap Trick, Seether, Black Stone Cherry. They shared the biggest stages with AC/DC, Killswitch Engage, Stone Sour, Shinedown, Rob Zombie, Ghost and many other accomplished acts. They smashed through each set, and every night, Hunt pushed through the pain barrier, watching fans sing back - no one knew what he was going through. "The fellas in the band cover the stage movement, the jumping and all the high energy, while I'm able to really internalise and project from a place of emotion," he explains.
The album was finished, but Hunt's pieced-together leg continued to deteriorate. He started the search for a doctor who would amputate so he at least would be able to walk with a prosthetic. "I wasn't apprehensive about the decision or anything. I was hopeful. A world without the same pain all the time seemed unreal but possible," he says.
In May 2021, as they released their first new song in three years, "Bird Dog," he found hope and a doctor, who works with young athletes, who replaced the joint and rebuilt the Achilles. Today he says," I'm still recovering and probably will over the next year or so, but I'm already better off than I was before the procedure. It's giving me a newfound focus on the things that are important to me. Like slaying crowds, and being present and active for my new daughter. I feel like I've been given the tools to have a higher quality in life."
Shaman's Harvest persevered through everything and wound up with their richest, most well-rounded album to date – to say it is a triumph, for the band, would be an understatement.
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Blacktop MojoFormed in late 2012 by vocalist Matt James and drummer Nathan Gillis in the small East Texas town of Palestine, Blacktop Mojo’s fiery blend of sludgy grooves, classic rock guitar riffs, and southern metal shredding falls somewhere between Soundgarden, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and ZZ Top to form a sound deemed by some as "Texas Grunge". The music draws on a multitude of genres and styles to form a hodgepodge of dirty, heavy rock and roll mixed with sensual and at times even, carnal blues. After their debut album “I Am” in 2014, The band spent a few years cutting their teeth in dive bars, dancehalls, and honky tonks around Texas.
In 2017, during the recording of their sophomore record "Burn The Ships" the guys quit their day jobs, moving into a small house together in Palestine, TX. The house created an unbreakable fellowship between the band and a culture of constant creativity.
Since then, the band has kept a relentless touring and recording schedule, with multiple songs reaching the top 40 on both the Mediabase and Billboard Rock Charts, no small feat for an independent artist. The band continues to grow the old-fashioned way by hitting the road, sweating it out on stage, and growing slowly, but surely, by word of mouth. “When you come see us,” says lead singer Matt James, “You're seeing rock and roll the way it used to be.
A group of people on stage playing their instruments right in front of your face. No laptops, no backing tracks. What you see is what you get.”
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