Louisville-based band White Reaper have been making the world a better place for over a decade with their unique brand of modern rock music. Formed while still in high school, this crew have rolled with every punch a fickle music industry could throw and have bounced back with their integrity intact. After their dalliance with a major record label (Elektra), White Reaper have made a spiritual return to the indie world and release their fifth long player on the terminally cool Blue Grape imprint. Featuring ten garage rock bangers, Only Slightly Empty finds White Reaper at their most vivacious, delivering an album not for only our times, but for all time.
With Nick and Sam Wilkerson (drums and bass respectively) leaving the band in 2024, it has been all change in the White Reaper camp. Now moving forwards as a trio (Tony Esposito, vocals/guitars; Hunter Thompson, guitars; Ryan Hater, keyboards) Only Slightly Empty is the sound of a band saying goodbye to past tribulations and warmly embracing the future. Racing out of the speakers, opening track ‘Coma’ is chrome-wheeled and fuel-injected, and is testament to the band’s sense of drive and purpose. It’s indicative of the whole album in that it deals in a kind of reductionism and doesn’t use two notes when one will suffice. Saying all it has to say in 105 seconds, it’s a track full of vim and vigour and bounces from speaker to speaker like a box full of mad frogs. With none of these tracks breaking the four minute barrier (and four at sub three), White Reaper don’t decorate their sound with baroque, ornate frills, preferring to take a more direct route and that makes cuts such as ‘Honestly’ all the more powerful. It’s punchy and pugnacious and lands a succession of heavy blows, each beat connecting like an electric shock, resonating with the listener on some deep, rarely explored level.
The great thing about White Reaper is that they sound like no one but themselves. Sure, you can detect the odd influence here and there (‘Eraser’ brings to mind The Pixies’ ‘Debaser’), but mainly the band are rocking their own sound. That doesn’t mean they are generic or operating in a kind of cruise control, far from it; White Reaper are constantly pushing at boundaries. It is not only their sound that’s original, but the individual tracks; each of these ten songs have their own personality, but stitched together by the band’s slightly off-kilter approach. Subsequently the punchy ‘Blue 42’ sits next to the shimmering ‘Pocket’ quite effortlessly before the unorthodox ‘Rubber Cement’ throws us a curveball.
White Reaper are back, and with scythe sharpened.
- Only Slightly Empty is released via Blue Grape Music on 26th September 2025.
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Track List:
1. Coma
2. Blink
3. Honestly
4. Freakshow
5. Eraser
6. Blue 42
7. Pocket
8. Enemy John
9. Rubber Cement
10. Touch
