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There haven’t been too many amazing rock bands, or even solo artists in the genre, emerging from the shadows of the American underground in the last few years that I’ve been reviewing music professionally, but in 2024, that tide appears to be turning. Indie acts like Samsara are sick of the rock n’ roll drought in the mainstream, and in the band’s new single and video “In Too Deep,” they wage war on the status quo with riffs as big as the Rocky Mountains. “In Too Deep” is red, white, and blue brutishness with a smart lyrical premise, and it stands to be one of the better songs of its kind to debut this season.
While the video for “In Too Deep” is frills-free, the riffs and lyrical fabric in this track each sport enough cinematic energy on their own to compensate for the general lack of indulgence on our screen. Truth be told, any more bells and whistles simply would have made this too intense to watch. There’s already such a strong dynamic coming from the collective wallop of the melodies and their adjoining grooves here for there to be any more flash in the imagery, and Samsara was smart for acknowledging as much right out of the gate
This bassline can’t help but make me think of a classic Soundgarden/Mudhoney sound, and not because of its sludgy, Seattle-style colorization alone. There’s a funkiness to the swing of the low-end tones in this track that is almost brutish in a couple of key moments, but it feels much more like a tribute to the PNW sound than it does a trite, watered-down take on a classic style of play. Samsara might be rookies finding their wings in 2024, but they’re still a lot more adept than any of the bands that would try a stunt as silly as that would be.
The guitars in this song have a wonderful tonality that lends a lot of agency to the overall flow of the music, and while they’re undisputedly a show-stealing element if there ever was one, I don’t think they overshadow the vocal to such a degree that we lose sight of the lyrical narrative here. To date, Samsara has proven itself quite reliable in constructing material that doesn’t lean in on thematic components to the extent of sounding one-dimensional, and in this most recent studio offering and its video, they show us an ability to impart emotion through both verses and music without getting overwhelmed by the task at hand.
They’ve still got a lot of room to continue their evolution, but “In Too Deep” is one heck of a hearty sample of what Samsara can knock out when the feeling in the studio is right. If they can muster this kind of energy when they’re performing together on stage, they’ll be in for even more success than their momentum is suggesting they’re going to find soon, but for now, this single and video are where it’s at for rock enthusiasts this summer.
Jennifer Munoz
