Moses Nose

If you want to hear one of the best straight out Rock and Roll albums put out in 2015 than pick up Moses Nose's Burning Bush. It is an epic offering of Rock that has not been heard since The Cult put out Sonic Temple.

This fast fun and groovy group has captured the old spirit of Rock and Roll and cranked up the amps to 11. When I listen to the album I almost think I have been transported back to the 1970's when Rock and Roll was a movement. - Yeneews Records

Monterey >> Moses Nose is more than a band — it’s a family.

Bassist Trevor Lucier, vocalist Vincent Randazzo, drummer Joey Hall and guitarist Josh Opitz spend as much time together as possible. They can often be found hanging out at La Tortuga restaurant in Seaside, devouring nachos, when they’re not playing a local gig, touring or working at their day jobs.

“The No. 1 way through how we approach playing live music is how we approach each other,” said Lucier. “We’ve lived a large portion of our lives together.”

The band will be playing at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 11, at Wave Street Studios in Monterey with Mental Musk, the Bloody Kerouacs and Folsom Youth.

Randazzo classifies the Moses Nose sound as “blister rock or Led Zeppelin playing through Metallica’s equipment.”

The band formed three years ago, though Hall and Opitz have been lifelong friends.

“We knew each other since we were in diapers, so there is already that brother-like dynamic between the two of us,” Hall said. “As for Trevor and Vincent, they are super easy for me to get along with and are some of the most interesting and genuine people that I have ever met. It was not at all difficult to bond with them and call them my brothers.”

During a recent nacho session at La Tortuga, the friends described the dynamic that feeds their success.

“Whether it’s a personal problem or a technique riddle someone is trying to crack and overcome, we can rely on each other for help,” Lucier said. “We all have really close bonds so it’s hard to say who’s closest to whom. I think of us as a well-oiled machine with every part doing its own job, all equally important.”

Here’s how Randazzo would break it down: “Joey’s the mediator, he’s the rock. When everyone is having problems, he’s the guy that solves them. Trevor is the well-oiled gears; he’s lucid in how he gets things done. Josh and I are the dreamers. Trevor definitely has dreams, but he’s the instigator and willing to put in the hard work.”

Adds Lucier: “Vince is the lyricist. Dreamy lyricist. Josh is the chaos. Josh ‘The Chaos’ Opitz.”

“I like that,” Opitz said.

The band is coming off a successful West Coast tour and has a new album in the works.

They released their first five-song EP in 2013, just “four young guys making loud noises,” Opitz said. “We created hard-hitting songs and showed what we were feeling at the time.”

They followed that up in January with their first full-length album, “The Burning Bush.” They say the next album will retain the sophistication of “Burning Bush” but have the heaviness of the EP.

Moses Nose has a dedicated fan base locally, one that followed them up to San Jose last month in a party bus. The band also plays often in Los Angeles, where Hall attends the University of Southern California.

Their 12-stop West Coast tour in May and June took them up to Olympia, Washington, and back.

“There were trials and tribulations,” Opitz said. “It was exciting, to say the least.”

“We’re a little shocking, a little astonishing,” Randazzo said. “We’re a salty crew — we went into venues and shocked them. People either loved it, glommed on or left the bar. Seeing intense emotional reactions was always a good thing.”

Jennie Tezak is a Herald correspondent. - Monterey Herald

Finally, through a haze of strobe, body heat, flannel and greasy long hair, Moses Nose cracks the night wide open with 45 minutes of loud guitar-driven retro metal. The outfit’s charismatic bassist Trevor Lucier – part Grizzly Adams, part Billy Gibbons – describes the quartet’s sound as rock that “moves from Pink Floyd to Judas Priest, hitting every dial in between.” He just might be right.
All told, the 16-and-older, three-hour-plus event, promoted as The Second Coming, brought together some of the area’s brightest up-and-coming bands for the first time.
In fact, they orchestrated it entirely. It consciously catered to the large percentage of under-21 musicians sprouting up in the area and addressed the lack of age-appropriate venues available to them and their fans, many of whom are also under 21.
The rock gathering – and its subsequent sequel, The Third Coming – also sparked an unofficial Renaissance within the local music scene.

2. “The Burning Bush” by Moses Nose

The sweltering title track off the quartet’s full-length debut is a flying hellcat that roars with the classic riffs that heavy metal was founded on. The fancy upper-fret finger-tapping guitar solos – on both guitar and bass – sprinkle the tune with irresistible campy seasoning. The song “The Burning Bush” sets the album The Burning Bush on fire.

Lucier describes the record as both conceptual and musically diverse, with “a lot of sex, drugs and rock and roll, but in a smart way,” he explains. “It’s not just raunchy for the sake of being raunchy.” Opitz adds, “There’s more of a rock feel than our first EP, and it shows how much we’ve grown musically.”
-Adam Joseph
Monterey County Weekly - Monterey County Weekly

Moses Nose- The Burning Bush is a great Rock and Roll album that begins with the statement "Rock or be Rocked Upon!" Full of steaming guitars and a more hooks than a fisherman's lure box, it is one hell of a release for 2015.

This is an album that I can not stop listening to. Its sonic assault just makes you want to see these Monterey, CA boys live.

If you are a fan of good old straight forward Rock and Roll than this is an album for you. They even have it listed on bandcamp on a name your price link. This is the type of Rock that should be on the radio, and is worth way more than they are asking!
-Kevin Sweeney - Kevin Sweeney- Yeneew Records

A somewhat harder-edged band, Moses Nose is a quartet of Monterey Peninsula young men who bring a healthy dose of classic rock- and-roll swagger to the proceedings. Vocalist and guitarist Vincent Randazzo fronts the group with his classic rock and roll look (rakishly handsome, rail thin, longhaired) backed up by lead guitarist by Josh Opitz and Lucier on bass. Joey Hall, the band’s drummer, is currently attending USC, but at this point comes home for gigs, such as “The Third Coming,” a November 8 show at the Monterey Fairgrounds headlined by Requiem, a Santa Cruz band that recently signed a deal with Cleopatra Records. Moses Nose is known for high-decibel, raucous live shows that include such classic rock spectacles as smashed guitars. Their music crosses genres: a mash-up of metal, indy and pop with infectious hooks.
-Mike Chatfield
Carmel Magazine - Mike Chatfield-Carmel Magazine

With electronic music easier to make than ever, a resurgent acoustic culture and the pop charts being dominated by hip-hop, the louderati in Moses Nose, who will be playing two nights in Ashland, have a simple, clearly-defined struggle.

“Not a lot of people connect with rock and roll like they used to,” says Trevor Lucier, bass for the band. “We gotta bring them reasons why they should.”

Their strategy for that is also simple: “rock or be rocked upon.” That means big riffs, loud amps and a rawkus stage demeanor, a formula that packs ballrooms in the band’s hometown of Monterrey. They call it blister-rock.

“Blister rock is vintage rock stylings, specifically rock and roll riffage, brought into the modern area,” says Lucier. “We use a lot of modern techniques. Especially with the signal chain in our pedal boards to achieve certain sounds. Almost everything in it is using some kind of effect that wouldn’t be possible at least until the ‘90s. But we stick to rock and roll techniques in our riffage.”

That’s pretty clear even in just the opening chords of Moses Nose 2015 album, The Burning Bush. The core of the song is a driving wave of ‘70s style stadium rock, with a swung rock riff and a power-pop melody. But the bassline beneath it is a roll of tapped and trilled textures for an especially driving sound.

Lucier says much of the more experimental techniques are lower in the mix on The Burning Bush, but they are still evident.

Another favorite technique of the band is a series of metal finger-rings worn by guitar player Lucier to interfere with the magnetic field of his guitar’s pickups for a ghostly, ethereal sound.

“It’s really something we developed through a mixture of boredom and necessity,” says Lucier. “For one, we really like trying new things. And for two, we live in a place where there are a lot of great musicians around, but not a lot of people play rock and roll.”

But that’s a corner Lucier sees culture coming around with the success of bands like The Black Keys and The White Stripes.

“It’s always been here,” he says. “But it’s being re-recognized.”

The band will be playing back to back nights in Ashland, at Paddy Brannan’s Irish Pub on Sat., May 30, and at Club 66 the next night. And as the band has to fly its drummer in for gigs from his full-time gig as an electrical engineering scholarship student at USC, it’s a good thing there are two chances to catch them because they may not be back for awhile. After tour wraps, the band will be heading into the garage to work on its next album.

“I think the second album is really going to be more focused on grabbing our audience by the throat and telling them, hey, we’re right here,” says Lucier.

And when, Dear Listener, it does inevitably grab you by the throat: feel the blisters on those fingers.

“We shred pretty hard,” says Lucier. “We get blisters a lot.” - Rogue Valley Messenger-

ALBUM REVIEW: The Burning Bush by Moses Nose

By: Derek Spencer

It is the merry morning time. I am traipsing into my office and now I am sipping my coffee and reading messages left by other people who traipsed into their offices and sipped their coffee before me. Do I suspect, here in my morning state, that within the next hour, I will hear the line “We are the kings of Nova Scotia” sung over-upon-over in a bossa nova-esque melody, laying over harmonize-matched guitar riffages, creating for me some wry international pun and an internal, yet mild, sense of disquiet? (What is nova, anyways, other than the obvious “nuclear explosion caused by a dying dead star”? I mean in the Brazilian and Canadian sense, what is nova?) No, dear reader, no. I do not expect this, but it is what has happened this morning. The ceaselessly punny 80’s apologists known to over 2,000 facebook users as Moses Nose are responsible for this disruption to my life of expected occasions, and whether or not I’m happy about it is none of your business.

“Oh man, oh man. You’ve gotta check out ‘The Burning Bush‘!” reads the email I received from Mister Vincent Randazzo on March the 10th. He is a master of viral marketing, because indeed, upon reading this short message over 2 months past due, I knew that yes, I gotta check this out, this album, The Burning Bush. This Mr. Vincent is the vocalist and guitarist of the band aforementioned– again here in print for the second time, Moses Nose– and yet also he is clearly the mouthpiece of the band, using tongue and finger to spread word of his groups artistic pursuits to the world wide world.

I listen and I say “this is not what I thought I would hear this morning,” with all the 80’s coming all over the place like my ears, gushing some might even say. Headphones overflow with the 80’s. I hear a man, formerly known to me as Vincent but now known to me as the man who just spake: “rock or be rocked upon”, he says now, he says: “I’m a sad man…. i’ll tell you straight up I don’t give a shit.” Oh no! This is a frightening time, that 80’s rockers such as Vincent and the Moses Noses crew might think so little of themselves. they have so much to offer! So much music, so much yelling, so much good emails! For what cause is this self-deprecation perpetrated and to what end? Shall I fear for the well-being of Vincent? What of Josh, Joey, and Trevor (if Vincent is the septum of the Moses Nose, then these thrice men-o-men are the duel nostrils and bridge, in turn)?

And then the bossa nova hits me and I am a new man. Please, lay more on me! Lay it on Thick! I will stop drinking this coffee and start drinking a new cup of coffee. This merry morning is merry in a new way, a way that only things that have been sitting in/on the backs of record stores for 30 years can be merry, pools of recycled slugde for me to drink out of my coffee pot with a smile on my face. We are the kings of Nova Scotia indeed. Please, by means of all to and from the people, continue to make rock which sometimes includes rapping. Please, for to all the folks who need it and you, never stop the pun! Be well, Vincent and the Nose parts, continue on with music and your ways of living little by little. You are adored. - Derek Spencer- Incontinence of Sound

The Second Coming was created in response to an ongoing local dilemma: the lack of local venues available to bands who are under 21 to play to audiences who are under 21. Last March, Sugar Sauce, The Bloody Kerouacs, Moses Nose and Slack performed to several hundred – most of whom were under 21. It set the table for The Third Coming this Saturday – and the possibility of establishing a ongoing event.
In addition to returning favorites Moses Nose and Slack, Salinas pop-punk rockers The Modern Life and Requiem, a Santa Cruz power-pop metal five-piece, also perform.
Nick Stoeberl returns as emcee, this time with official recognition from the Guinness Book of World Records for having the world’s longest tongue.
Moses Nose lead guitarist Josh Opitz is confident The Third Coming’s turnout will surpass the first event, which is good news since his band is armed with a crop of new tunes. The outfit’s in the process of mixing and mastering its full-length debut, The Burning Bush, under the guidance of Aaron Rauber at Franklin Street Recording Studio. They’re shooting for an early-2015 release.
Bassist Trevor Lucier describes the record as both conceptual and musically diverse, with “a lot of sex, drugs and rock and roll, but in a smart way,” he explains. “It’s not just raunchy for the sake of being raunchy.”
Opitz adds, “There’s more of a rock feel than our first EP and it shows how much we’ve grown musically.”
The sweltering title track roars with chunky metal guitar riffs and a plethora of stylized finger-tapping guitar solos; Lucier even unleashes out some of his own badass finger-tapping on bass.
With “Softcore Porn,” the young rockers meld Van Halen’s brand of sexual innuendo-laden hard rock with Red Hot Chili Peppers’ tongue-and-cheek misogyny a la “Sir Psycho Sexy”: “The words are written all over your face/ This sexual tension won’t go to waste,” lead singer Vincent Randazzo delivers with an intense strain recalling Anthony Kiedis.
“[The album] has a consistent rock pulse,” Lucier says. “It moves from Pink Floyd to Judas Priest, hitting every dial in between.”
All music fans 16 and up are welcome to attend. Flanagan’s Pub provides a full bar for those seeking adult beverages. - Monterey County Weekly

Hottest New Artist Charts with Flaming Dolly as the #2 song in August. Well done lads!!! - Hottest New Artist (HNA)

Photo Caption- Moses Nose has built a strong local following and an increasingly formidable regional presence too.

During their debut performance at the legendary Rainbow Bar & Grill in Los Angeles, Monterey rockers Moses Nose were told by the venue’s sound man their show was loud as hell. The tech didn’t mean it as a compliment, but Bassist Trevor Lucier says the guys took it as one. Longtime Rainbow regular, Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead, was still playing video poker at the bar after their set, which means that the heavy metal demigod heard their music and stuck around. That’s a bigger compliment.
But Moses Nose isn’t the loudest game on the Peninsula anymore. Over the past several months, P.G. High’s Mental Musk have erupted onto the local scened. Last May, the teenaged headbangers won the Band-Aid Music Battle benefit at Planet Gemini. In between covers of Guns N’ Roses’ “Night Train” and Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” the outfit delivered a well-placed original, “Fogged In,” an angsty middle finger to Mental Musk’s butterfly-happy hometown. Lead singer Noah Cryns slinked around the stage like a self-aware Axl Rose who doesn’t need to shave. And guitarist Yvan Vucina’s obvious affinity for Slash goes beyond fretboard exploration – though the kid rocks some pretty fluid solos. In the vein of Slash’s hair/hat combo that famously hides his eyes from the world while he shreds, Vucina sports an untamable mane that he whips around at high velocities.
On Friday at Wave Street Studios, Mental Musk and Moses Nose are on the same bill for the first time. It gets better – and more versatile – from there. Folsom Youth will also be on hand. The lovable P.G. youngsters – Kristin Sollecito (vocals), Rachel Spung (guitar), Emily Muller-Foster (bass), Kim Sollecito (drums) – seem like they’re on the roster of every quality local gig that goes down.
“It’s more about having something to prove to ourselves than anyone else,” Spung says. “We try to get better for ourselves and hope everyone listening has a good time.” After a year of fine-tuning their set, which bounces with surfy ’60s garage rock originals and tasty covers, including the Bo Diddley classic “Not Fade Away,” Spung finds satisfaction in the fact she rarely hears comments afters shows anymore like, “They’re pretty good for girls.” Instead it’s just, “They’re a damn good band.”
Energetic trio the Bloody Kerouacs – drummer Rutger Sperry, guitarist/vocalist Dashiell Stokes and bassist Quinn Murphy – round out the four-band lineup with an infectious brand of pop-punk.

-Adam Joseph
Monterey County Weekly - Monterey County Weekly