Album Review: Higher Vibration // From Rivers to Oceans

Local reggae band Higher Vibration drops 44 minutes of feel-good tracks on their newest album From Rivers to Oceans on all music platforms. With eight songs packed full of inspirational lyrics, danceable melodies, and bright guitars, this album will take you on a spiritual and introspective journey. From Rivers to Oceans is a self-produced project featuring Kyle Hammer on vocals and guitar, Jake Van Hooser on the bass, and Derek Sloppy on the drums. The first track, titled "I&I," starts off strong with a heavy guitar solo that leads into motivational verses about manifesting life's passions outside of a 9 to 5 job, before rolling right back into more unique guitar effects almost comparable to dubstep. "New Sound" really drives home the way Higher Vibration recreated their sound and image for this project, and lyrically gives us an insight on why they chose to become musicians and pursue this passion. The track "Fall of Babylon" is a smooth and melodic piece, featuring a unique instrument called a melodica (relative of the harmonica). "Confluence" is a short instrumental that preludes perfectly into the very last song, the eponymous "From Rivers to Oceans" which is a whopping 8 minutes and 30 seconds and shines a light on how talented these three musicians are together.