Scale the Summit at the Gramercy Theatre

Two guitarists, Chris Letchford and Travis Levrier, grew up in the same neighborhood in Houston, Texas, and reconnected in 2003 in a record store, discussing a common interest, Between the Buried and Me. The duo in 2005 enrolled in the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, California, mainly hoping to meet new people to join their band. They noticed Pat Skeffington wearing a Between the Buried and Me T-shirt with drumsticks protruding from his backpack, and found a bassist through a classified ad. Levrier coined the name Scale the Summit after seeing a photograph titled "The Summit" in a photography book. Initially, the band played technical metal behind a vocalist, but soon became an instrumental progressive metal band. Scale the Summit self-funded a demo CD, which was distributed at shows in Los Angeles. The band relocated back to Houston and in 2012 recruited Mark Michell as the current drummer. Scale the Summit's fourth and most current album is 2013's The Migration.

At the Gramercy Theatre tonight, the crowd-surfing and moshing ended with Glass Cloud's set; the audience was riveted motionlessly to Scale the Summit's technical metal wizardry. Scale the Summit performed a full set of instrumental music accompanied by a video backdrop that introduced the title of each composition as it began and then looped moving images related to the title. Each member of the front line had extra strings on their instrument; the guitarists played seven strings and the bassist six. The band's soundscapes balanced intricate layers of shredding and melodic atmospheric pieces into a sonic harmony. Chugging "djent" guitar riffs led to clean jazz and classical-inspired movements, blending virtuosity with tastefulness. Letchford liberally peppered his trademark, fleet-fingered “tapping” style on the neck of his unusually-shaped guitar. Although many of the pieces featured complicated jazz-like structures, the progressive quartet seemed to play every song exactly as it was recorded, allowing no room for improvisation. Scale the Summit has reached the heights of Behind the Buried and Me, Animals as Leaders, Cynic and Protest the Hero.

Visit Scale the Summit at www.scalethesummit.com