Bad Trips Premiere Their Turbulent Track, “Trapped Under Ice”

When you begin to discover Bad Trips, you quickly get a sense of the band’s motifs. They aren’t an act to be categorized, but the more you experience them, the more you understand where they are coming from. Today, the band debuts their brand new single “Trapped Under Ice” from their latest record, Nothing But Trouble.

A reverberating instrumental, the song creates an edgy, eerie atmosphere that fits right within the album’s psychedelic form. With both acid and industrial rock influences, “Trapped Under Ice” immerses you further into the Bad Trips world and shows the more weird, experimental side of the band, apart from the album’s first single, “Slaughter High,” released last month.

Commenting on the song, the band states:

“We recorded it in a single take in a Long Island basement. It was improvised on top of recurring themes, informed by a television show your co-worker told you to watch: there’s a killer, and it’s somewhere very cold where you can see your breath in the dark. (Drummer) Konrad (Kamm) does the vocal.”

When you enter the world of Bad Trips, you are entering a territory of maximum experimentation. The group features bassist and multi-instrumentalist Andy Borsz, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist David Drucker, and drummer/multi-instrumentalist Konrad Kamm. Based in the Ridgewood neighbourhood of Queens, New York, they are a psych noise rock trio who consider themselves a concept band. That’s not to suggest that every record they record is a “concept album,” but recurring themes do appear throughout their recordings. They gather inspiration far and wide, reaching out to other forms of music and media.

The band members have a particular affinity for films, but not necessarily mainstream ones. The plots of 1986 B-movies Slaughter High and Class of Nuke ‘Em High played a pivotal role in the writing and recording of Nothing But Trouble. But they also look to real-life experiences that we can all relate to. Such as the memory of a drug-induced panic attack at work during high school, or the feeling of getting cut by the team, or snubbed by the girl you want to take to the prom.

As a unit, Bad Trips do things their own way. They are the definition of original and certainly not a throwback to any specific artist or musical movement. You may think of them as an underground band of musical explorers, searching far and wide for their next musical idea.

Bad Trips ‘Nothing But Trouble’ album artwork, by Charles Comer