Aaron Retka: Bass
Daniel Harvey: Drums
Jeremy Grobsmith: Guitar

Base of operations: Colorado Springs, CO

MP3s at www.myspace.com/matterhorn719 and www.facebook.com/matterhorn719

Biography:
The wilds of Colorado brought forth the three men of Matterhorn. Daniel Harvey, Jeremy Grobsmith and Aaron Retka have played together for a decade, first in the tech-violence quartet the Great Redneck Hope, whose two full-lengths remain required listening for the genre. Now, as Matterhorn, they've condensed into a thundering instrumental three-piece, relying on low-grade musical telepathy and a collective half-century of musical experience.

Matterhorn's debut release, Vol. 1. The world began without man ... is the first part of a diptych of theme albums, Vol. 1. providing a bleak and scientifically plausible series of events that rinse life from the Earth. (Vol. 2 will pick up where Vol. 1 leaves off.) Over the course of the album, Matterhorn provides a auditory tour of the end of man, alternately blistering and mild, bombastic and stark. This, along with their explosive live show, should do well in helping secure their legacy.

Similar artists: Converge, Baroness, Mastodon, Isis, Pelican, Russian Circles, High On Fire

Discography:
V/A "Ten Years Of Thinker Thought" Thinker Thought Records 2011
"Vol. 1. The World Began Without Man..." Thinker Thought Records 2011


Matterhorn - Download printable press photo 1 (3072 x 2304 jpeg)

Track Listing:
1. Stage One: Long Valley Caldera, 8:32 a.m.
2. Stage Two: Armada Storm.
3. Stage Three: The Currents.
4. Stage Four: The South Atlantic Anomaly.
5. Stage Five: 99942 Apophis.

Press:
"The difficulties of writing a 5 track, 30 minute instrumental concept album must be immense. I know what you're thinking; 'an instrumental concept album?' And that's what I first thought too. But while reading the packaging of Matterhorn's debut 'Vol 1: The world began without man...' it was ever apparent that these guys took its music seriously. Although the album is an entirely instrumental affair, each track comes with a paragraphs worth of back-story which works perfectly in setting the mood and tone of the record.

"The story itself is one that many bands have told before, but instead of telling the story through words Matterhorn shares its apocalyptic tale through massive heaviness. The idea of the Earth being destroyed by the forces of nature is nothing new, but Matterhorn is somehow able to capture all of the devastation and havoc into its instrumental jams. What's great about this record is the fact that it never gets boring, not once. You never know what to expect next, where the all mighty riff will end up going.

"It’s hard to settle on any one stand-out track since everything works together so well. From the first 'stage' to the final cut every song is a pummeling affair that contains some of the heaviest riffs imaginable. The band also manages to keep things fresh with enough moments of progression and ambiance. The closing moments of 'Stage Five' are especially worthy of praise, although the entire album keeps the pulses racing at insane speeds.

"The band make it apparent that this is, in the very least, a two part adventure that promises even more sludgy heaviness to be dished out in the future. The truth is, it’s going to take a near godly performance from Matterhorn to be able to top this album. With the exception of one shrill, annoying sample that ends 'Stage Two,' the album is fantastic and provides a 30 minute instrumental that's both memorable and enjoyable; even requiring repeated listens to pick up on all of its masterful subtleties.

"Not only is the music incredible, but 'Vol 1' is also a cliff-hanger album that builds anticipation towards 'Vol 2;' seeing as the world was completely destroyed in part one. With 'Vol 1' already being an early contender for album of the year, all that's left to say is - bring on the sequel!

"Highs: Every moment is interesting and it never feels like you're listening to a 30 minute instrumental.

"Lows: One incredibly annoying sample puts a temporary halt on the album's flow.

"Bottom line: The new text book for instrumental metal, written by pure heaviness and godly riffs.

"9/10" - Metal Underground Dot Com

"Rock 'n' roll apocalypse

"You’ve got to love a metal band that takes as its theme the destruction of the human species through volcanic eruption. Well okay, maybe ‘love’ isn’t the right word. Certainly, though, there’s a conceptual element here that raises Matterhorn’s Vol. 1: The World Began Without Man… above some of its sillier counterparts, and it deserves acknowledgment.

"Not that the concept is brought out through the lyrics, because there aren’t any, apart from occasional snatches of real-life TV commentary. It’s the album’s liner notes that make it clear that the first song, 'Long Valley Caldera, 8:32 a.m.', is about the eruption of a volcano that spews '6700 cubic kilometers' of ash. From there, as you might imagine, things only get worse. By the time we reach the final song, '99942 Apophis', we are dealing with 'global fire' and 'continental molting'. Yikes!

"The good news is that the vocabulary of heavy metal—pounding drums, scorching layers of distortion and feedback, chunky rhythms and the occasional bit of nimble-fingered fretwork—is the perfect medium to suggest global apocalypse. Lack of vocals means also a lack of—thank God—cookie-monster growling that passes for singing with so much of the metal fraternity these days. The five songs that make up this 30-minute arc vary in tempo and structure with enough sonic surprises to ensure that the proceedings never get dull. That’s as it should be: the last thing anyone wants from the end of the world is to get bored." - David Maine of PopMatters.Com

"Marijuana smoke fills my lungs as I sink into the couch and my head can't stop banging back and forth as my ear pussy is being fucked by the musical cock of Matterhorn's debut album 'Vol. 1 The World Began Without Man.'" - What's Left?

"Great Redneck Hope reforms as heavy-handed instrumental metal trio." - Creative Loafing

"On Vol. 1. The World Began Without Man…, Matterhorn takes the familiar destruction-of-human-civilization post-rock theme, splits it up into five stages/songs, and parlays it into a thick-riffed, heavy metal aural story. However, the Colorado trio (all ex-members of The Great Redneck Hope) forgo the more ambient, spacey, and experimental sound most instrumental post-rock bands employ, choosing instead to cash in on their namesake and deliver our demise through mountainous, fuzzy, sludge-leaning chaos that’s as much Karma to Burn as it is Russian Circles, but both will get you where you want to go when it comes down to it. It all plays out in about thirty minutes and covers mankind’s legitimately scientific impending doom, including volcanic unrest (“Stage One: Long Valley Caldera, 8:32 a.m.”), cyclones/typhoons (“Stage Two: Armada Storm”), whatever “The Currents” is about (“Stage Three: The Currents”), radiation (“Stage Four: The South Atlantic Anomaly”), and asteroids (“Stage Five: 99942 Apophis”), all of it a crushing and (at times) melodic attack no doubt laying the groundwork for whatever Vol. 2 is going to delve into. Probably an apocalyptic afterlife or something, who knows. You gotta get through this hopeless bastard first." - Jeff of Broken Beard

"I wasn't entirely sure what kind of metal I was going to get with Colorado trio Matterhorn's debut. The doom and gloom concept of man's fall was obvious in the song titles - the really long, pretty nerdy song titles. This thing could have easily jumped the rails into pretentious art-rock from the opening note with detail-oriented paragraphs following each of the five 'Stages' titles. So, it was a huge relief when these instrumentals came blasting out of the speakers. The riffs have quite a bit more in common with Mastodon and the like than they do the artier end of instrumental metal and the production, particularly the guitars, is raw and unpolished. Matterhorn benefit from the brief 30-minute run time, never letting riffs get repetetive or idle. 3/5." - Andrew Lampela of Ghettoblaster

"The Great Redneck Hope spent the last decade entertain audiences with what Decibel Magazine termed “Tech-metal [for] snobs.” But with a new decade so comes a new band name and new album, The Great Redneck Hope releases their first album as Matterhorn.

"Matterhorn’s debut album, Vol. 1. The World Began Without Man…, is somewhere between a full length and an EP. The album contains only five tracks but clocking in at 30 minutes makes it pretty close to a full length. In general, breaking the album into tracks seems like a superfluous task; the album plays like one giant 30 minute instrumental metal opus.

"I use the word metal loosely when discussing Matterhorn because the album has a certain evolution that leads it from a brutal metal beginning to more tame waters. By the fourth track, “Stage Four: The South Atlantic Anomaly.” the band is making instrumental rock somewhere between 90s alternative music and instrumental rock bands like The Cancer Conspiracy. The result is something that is oddly soothing which I suppose is only really odd because the album is being marketed as a metal album.

"Overall, I really like Matterhorn. It is not at all what I expected when I heard I would be reviewing a metal album today. The album is full of technically proficient guitar work and interesting song constructions; Decibel was pretty dead on, it is music for tech metal snobs. 8.3/10" - Adam Morgan of Surviving The Golden Age

"The dilemma facing every metal band that opt to omit a singer is trying to convince the listener that their music conveys meaning on its own, independent of even the basest of post-metal screams, which Matterhorn could easily have mustered (and did with their previous, more technical incarnation, the Great Redneck Hope). Although Matterhorn support their instrumental meanderings on The World Began Without Man... with an interesting, if predictable, concept (describing the end of the world ― surprise), delivering an impressive array of riffs sourced from numerous credible and crusty sources ― from Mastodon-style ornamentations on the opening track to the Converge-ish hardcore of "Armada Storm," not to mention a number of parts that descend in tempo towards levels of sludge Pelican would approve of ― the cataclysm this record is supposed to encapsulate is lost to a seemingly endless flurry of those aforementioned guitar extravaganzas, which, unfortunately, lack the musical themes to tie them together." - Mike Simpson of Exclaim!

"Matterhorn certainly isn't the first metallic unit to chronicle the utter decimation of humanity, but they are one of the few to explore it in such minute, painstaking detail.  Vol 1. The World Began Without Man... is the first part of a two album cycle documenting a massive environmental catastrophe that wipes mankind from the face of the planet through five distinct stages - pretty heady stuff for instrumental post-metal.  Matterhorn's fusion of Mastodon, Neurosis, and Pelican does an effective job of conveying both the cataclysmic destruction and the emotional despair that comes with Armageddon.  The liner notes helpfully provide descriptions of each individual disaster so you can follow along, and even when the music leaves you unsure who's dying, you can usually figure it out.  There are some nice little touches, too.  When Australia is flooded via quiet post-rock during 'Stage Three: The Currents,' the band throws in some didgeridoo in the background.  The whole thing clocks in at around half an hour, which is shorter than your average Roland Emmerich disaster film, and the brief runtime means that the music has the most powerful (asteroid) impact.  Is Matterhorn rewriting the rules of post-metal?  Not really, but these guys still have a truly apocolyptic approach.  8/10" - Jeff Treppel of Outburn Magazine #57

"This instrumental metal trio from Colorado performs the powerful tunes from their debut release, "Vol. 1: The World Began Without Man," the first installment of their [two]-album concept release." - AZCentral.com

"Matterhorn's "Vol. 1. The World Began Without Man ... " is an instrumental concept album that explores the annihilation of man from the Earth. The apocalyptic theme is evident not from the dismal and dark metal sound emanating from the tracks, but from the EP’s jacket, which, after every title, contains scientific explanations of varying forms of doom, including solar wind and magnetosphere dwindles. Who says you can't learn from metal music?" - Sonic Reducer/Alibi.com (Albuquerque, NM)

"Imagine Pelican if they were more about the war hammer than the scalpel, and a random member of Hail of Bullets were sitting in.

"…That’s a very crude approximation of Colorado’s Matterhorn (not to be confused with Australia or Belgium’s bands of the same name) and their first full-length, Vol. 1. The World Began Without Man…

"It’s instrumental metal, which I love, and it’s crazy-detuned, which I practically worship. There’s five tunes (called Stages), and each one seems to sonically delineate, as Matterhorn puts it, a “plausible” end of the world.

"Maybe I’m deeply misanthropic, but it’s strangely soothing.

"Stage One, Long Valley Caldera is bowel-shaking mono-note doom, but doom that also manages to upswing when it wants to and take off like Ghost Rider‘s bike. Rare, in my experience anyway, that doom can be agile at times too.

"Armada Storm (stage 2) highlights the Hail of Bullets similarities, and The Currents (stage 3), at around 3:15 fires off some nicely coordinated feedback (it’s so rare to hear an actual “new” sound in music– Matterhorn use the feedback as a separate instrument, like Eyehategod can), and at 4:30 they launch into a sweet helmet-ish riff.

"Overall, Vol. 1 is nicely blended: it bounces from sounds to sound and riff to riff but seems like one coherent sound, rather than a hodge-podge; similar to the way soundtracks change moods but still score the same movie.

"Stage 5 ends with tape hiss, static, and fragmented emergency management system radio broadcasts, heard through that cheap wind-up radio you put in the bomb shelter… It grinds down to the end with sounds representative of both Matterhorn and the end of times- the noise floor of the apocalypse." - The Soda Shop / StonerRock.com / Heavy Planet

"These guys will have a must have album in the genre in 2011. If you're a fan of bands such as Converge, Baroness, Mastodon, Isis, Pelican, Russian Circles, High On Fire or Eyehategod, you won't want to miss these guys. Their song on Myspace is epic, fast, heavy and bone crushing. Please don't listen late at night or around the young and elderly. The music whips you up into a frenzy, an instant mosh if you will. You're bound to hurt the weak. I'm not even going to mention the track on Facebook. Just don't say I didn't warn you." - The Soda Shop / StonerRock.com / Heavy Planet

"Matterhorn releases their bludgeoning down-tempo post-rock instrumental aural assault on you from the Rockie mountains of Colorado. If you worship bands such as Converge, Baroness, Mastodon, Isis, Pelican, Russian Circles, and High On Fire then Matterhorn is right up your alley. As the band prepares to release their first full-length album for Thinker Thought Records on 1/4/11, they have made available a few songs for for your listening pleasure." - The Soda Shop / StonerRock.com / Heavy Planet

"The Springs is having a long-awaited reunion of its own this weekend. You know the dudes: Aaron Retka, Jeremy Grobsmith and Daniel (Lee) Harvey (Oswald). Together, and with others, they were the Great Redneck Hope, and then the equally intense Thruster. They came, they played, they conquered. Now they are back, and they are Matterhorn. Debuting their "loud, and ballsy, and thick" new sound on Saturday, May 15, at the Triple Nickel Tavern, Matterhorn is simply the natural progression of their previous projects.” – Colorado Springs Independent