manhigh

At the moment, we're sticking with releasing singles because it's more affordable since we're doing this whole thing by ourselves. We're coming up with ideas, doing research and putting a lot of songs out there so there is something for people to listen to. Our stuff is everywhere online on things like iTUNES and SPOTIFY. We're doing that to keep fresh music rolling out. We've got a third single coming out soon but it's still in the mixing process. Before we went on tour we recorded two more songs. I think touring has helped in solidifying our music. There is no way that you can't get better playing five shows in a week. I'm happier with the reaction than I thought I could've been. I was worried because of my old band that people would expect that kind of thins. I'm proud of what I did with THROW THE TEMPLE but I'm happy because people have taken to MANHIGH as well. One of the things we heard on tour was "We had a band from New Mexico play here once an they were terrible." When people heard thirty seconds of our first song we could see them going "Oh shit! This is great!" People were excited to hear that we were from Albuquerque. No one knows that much about music in Albuquerque. Getting that reaction was really amazing. It let us know that we were onthe right path."
- GABRIEL GAMBINO OF MANHIGH - ROCKWiRED Magazine

The 2nd single from Gabe, Gabbi, and Ray from Manhigh. They just keep getting better, and I can’t wait until they FINALLY get to the East Coast to tour! - Jealous Sounds

I got GABRIEL GAMBINO going in a recent phone conversation when I described the sound of his new band MANHIGH as QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE on peyote. The man knows me well enough to know that such a comparison from me comes from the heart. For the past seven years, I've come to know GAMBINO as the front man of the alt-rock band THROW THE TEMPLE and have seen the band's evolution from demo makers into a serious touring band (one of the few out of Albuquerque these days) with an LP (ANYWAY BUT DOWN from 2015) that had the potential to go the distance. This was a band that seemed determined to break out of the Duke City and make a dent in the world of active rock sharing the touring stage with bands like ACIDIC. Mysteriously, the band ceased operations and despite my prying GAMBINO has been tight-lipped as to the reasons for the demise. But why dwell on the past when his new band MANHIGH is making more engaging music? Sure, THROW THE TEMPLE has some active rock smarts that could've earned the guys airplay in whatever active rock market is left in this country, but the music of MANHIGH takes GAMBINO's ingrained rock sensibility all the way to the edge with band's promising singles - the haunting LOVE LETTERS FROM SPACE which combines the SPACE ODDITY narrative with RADIOHEAD's PABLO HONEY-era angst is one hell of an introduction. On the heels of LOVE LETTERS... is the thundering menace of ANTARCTICA. Things are progressing at a brisk pace for the new band. Aside from releasing two singles, the three piece band has just completed a 22-date tour of the West Coast with the Brazilian band SPACE TIME RIPPLE. Our bets were high that THROW THE TEMPLE was going to make folks realize that there is music coming out of Albuquerque. But with MANHIGH we are confident that the band's artistry and drive is going to put Albuquerque on the map and make it famous for something other than TV shows about a meth making operation and a likeable scumbag lawyer. - ROCKWiRED.COM

One of our fave bands here at Jealous Sounds, Manhigh is a band first and foremost, about love. Gabe and Gabrielle Gambino’s marriage is at the center of this band, so getting a hella love song from them shouldn’t surprise anyone. It’s glorious, and here it is. - Jealous Sounds

We at ROCKWIRED are often guilty of never looking at what is going on inour own backyard. By backyard, I mean Albuquerque, New Mexico. A couple of years back ROCKWIRED got to know the band THROW THE TEMPLE and their front man GABRIEL GAMBINO. Now GAMBINO seeks to make an impression with his new project MANHIGH and the single LETTERS FROM SPACE sounds like it needs to be in a shuffle with QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE and MARS VOLTA. - ROCKWiRED Magazine

Dearest Show Up! readers: If you would like to kindly rock the fuck out this weekend, please hold it all in until Sunday night and then freak out in a Moonage Daydream on Sunday, Feb. 18 at the Moonlight Lounge (120 Central Ave. SW). That’s when for realz punk rockers Jason Paul and the Know It Alls crash land in our town to perform arcane sonic rituals designed to turn your brain into a type of quantuum goo that can defy space and time. Fronted by a dude that actually gets to hang out with Mike Watt in beautiful San Pedro, Calif., this acclaimed yet seriously thrashed out ensemble will be joined in their cacophonous endeavors by some real local heros. I don’t know much about openers Fad Vandals and Arcade Rivals—unless they ring me back before press time and the clocks ticking, dudes—but that’s okay because I can tell you plenty about Manhigh. That’s the name of a new outfit that includes Ray Gutierrez. You remember him don’t you? He and his peers were pretty much responsible for invigorating Burque’s punk scene in the early ’90s with a thing called Resin Records. Gutierrez was in one of the label’s star vehicles, a heady, sludgy, deliriously intense ensemble known as allucaneat. Now he’s back and jamming with Gabriel Gambino on vocals and guitar and Gambino’s wife Gabrielle on bass. They totally rock! Of course, Ray is still blowing things up with his drum sticks and Gambino’s guitar playing is explosively tight and tasty. And you can go boom too, faithful Alibi reader, but you have to get thee to this gig first. Keep that in mind before you get torched on Saturday night at the Doctor Jeep show. 8pm • $5 • 21+ - Weekly Alibi

If you dig rocanrol of two varieties—local and fucking excellent—then combine these two kind flavas together for me home-piece—by going to the concert at Launchpad (618 Central Ave. SW) on Wednesday, Dec. 5. This show will feature some of the best in local rockers playing their hearts out for you. The bands on this mad midweek program include the illustrious Manhigh, featuring the amazingly musical Gambino family and former allucaneat drummer and all around badass Ray Gutierrez! Five Mile Float—another band that I have often demanded listeners get the hell out of the house to listen to live—are also on a bill that includes rock scene newbies Slow Caves, St. Petersburg and Moth Wings. What are you waiting for? Get thee out now before it really gets cold around Christmas! 9pm • $5 • 21+. - Weekly Alibi

I really wanted to write something very cool for this episode of Weekly Alibi presents interviews with real live rockers. And it gets to happen in the midst of a glorious print edition that also includes killer summer film previews as well as feature on burgers that will have you praying to the grill in your backyard as it if really is G_d. What fun!
manhigh gave me that opportunity. They came out of the depths of space and time to rock out for you, Burque.
And that’s no surprise, really, when you consider who’s involved. Guitarist Gabriel Gambino, his wife and bass player Gabrielle and drummer/provocateur Ray Gutierrez have it going on. They’re charismatic, just a tad aloof and generally possessed of the purest rocanrol energy possible—to the extent that it seems to float all around them, all sparkly and precisely relevant as they wander through the world on tour, making music and raising hell with gloriously gritty yet delicately tender tuneage.
Gutierrez, you might recall, has deep roots in the scene around these parts. An OG member of the notorious yet brightly legendary Resin Records coolective created by Alan Deem and Keith Herrera in the early ’90s, Ray provides a brutally booming basis for the musical machinations of the Gambinos—a pair of authentic rocanrolistas from outta el Norte in Denver—as they swoop and careen though grungy landscapes laden with the fruits of precise pop mastery.
Nowhere is that clearer than on the trio’s latest single. “Sorry Doll” has got the grit and slink of a screwed-down Rolling Stones romance gone sour fable with a catchy arpeggiated guitar lick casually yet competently thrown in for sauce. The subtle hook slips into a dreamlike reverie before resuming with the words, “You did this to yourself.” It’s a direct, almost blunt form of rocanrol, designed to batter the brain and loosen the heart muscles, on display here.
After getting a glorious load of that for a day or two, I dialed up Gabriel. He told me that the entire crew was down to chat, so I told them to come on over. We sat around Weekly Alibi HQ and talked about the thing called rocanrol and the beast known to Burqueños as manhigh. Here are some highlights of that historic summit. - Weekly Alibi

Two weeks later, a flyer for The Talking Hours popped up and Manhigh was also on the ticket. I walked in Jake’s brewery for the show, on a Friday, the thirteenth, oddly enough. I barely got in the door and heard “JOE!!!” I have not been publicly writing long enough for anyone to know me, my name, or what I write about so the screaming name thing kind of startled me. I looked over in the direction my name was shouted and it was Richard and Trish, sitting front row and dead center. It took my sober brain about .505 seconds to figure out what was happening, and that ascension was imminent. No turning back now; strap in, batten the hatch, and let the damn thing happen.

Ray Gutierrez caught my eye first, as he leisurely set up his drum kit like a gear head walking through a swap meet looking for a set of valve covers for a 327 double-hump small block. Ray is old school cool, calm, and fluid; he oozes finesse with gentle, poetic movements. Ray reminded me of an older boxer out of east Los Angeles; he’s been around long enough to have seen some shit, but he carries himself like a college professor who could easily teach us the philosophy of “fuck around and find out” and it was a stark warning that the small venue was about to blast the 80-ton doors off the missile silo. I got lost in the crowd as Ray continued to set up his half of the stage, and I still had no idea who the singer was, but the instant he took the stage and strummed his guitar, I knew I was doomed. Oh well, I had a good run.

Gabe Gambino hit a few chords for his sound check and Ray, cool as a box fan on high, simply goofed off on his kit while Gabe found that magical tune. Gabe Gambino and Ray Gutierrez fired the rockets to the Echoes space ship booster without a single word spoken. The first piece of their set was an unannounced soul snatcher that required no introduction, and no warning. Somewhere around minute five or six, after picking my spleen off the sheetmetal floor of the cockpit, Gabe went from humble guitar guy to headbanger extraordinaire and I realized, after the shock, that they were only a two-piece band, filling an entire dive bar-turned brewery with enough noise to raise poor Mother Theresa and Joan of Arc from their peaceful and well-deserved sleeps. Gabe and Ray are so intricately connected that they could easily tell a story with instruments alone, but Gabe blessed the crowd with his powerful and personal lyrics, as a whole tribe of recognizable musicians observed intensely from the far right side wall. During song breaks, I kept looking over at that wall and couldn’t help but feel some sort of looming, unspoken kinship they had for the two surviving combatants on stage.

Ray played the infamous Dingo Bar in the 90’s and something tells me Jake, the owner of the current Echoes venue, and Ray probably spilled beer together at the same bar on the same nights back in Duke City’s musical heyday. Gabe, who came back to Albuquerque in 2008, after serving as an Army Special Ops Communications specialist, came along later and played often at the Dingo-turned-Burt’s Tiki Lounge with his former band, Throw the Temple. There must be some kind of magical musical portal at 313 Gold Ave that muggles don’t know about, but both Ray and Gabe knew it intimately; nearly as well as they knew each other. Later, in 2016, Gabe met his then girlfriend, Gabrielle, and taught her how to play bass. Gabe and Gabrielle soon married, and Ray agreed to drum with the two and the trio hit the road. They only had four months to write, practice, and get ready for an upcoming tour. Three musicians, headed west to California, came up with the name Manhigh, based off the 1950’s Air Force aero-medical experiment that analyzed the human factors of space travel using balloons as the vessel.

In 2019, as Manhigh’s balloon was ascending rapidly into the music industry stratosphere, unknown forces blew a fatal hole in the space jam project and Gabrielle Gambino departed this world, far too early for any of her hundreds, if not thousands of loved ones would have preferred. We never know when tragedy will strike, but when it does, the heartless bastard leaves a trail of tears, chaos, anger, and numbness that even the most savage of warriors sometimes cannot endure. We simply do what we can, at the request of the family and loved ones, and we offer support when the motor comes back to rev in the red. Those who have experienced it, have either succumbed to the mourning, living a life of self-loathing, or they have figured out a way to keep going. Gabe Gambino, with the quiet and humble support of Ray Gutierrez, and other close loved ones, chose to keep going. Music is love and love of a thing is often the only force that keeps us mortals on this giant rock methodically drifting through a time and space continuum we simply cannot comprehend.

During a few of our recent chats, Gabe said that “Manhigh prides themselves on being a 2-piece band, using chords and drums to fill the sound” and they are certainly not looking for pity. In fact, they reject it vehemently. Gabe and I are both combat veterans, and in a street sense of the school of hard knocks, so is Ray. True combat veterans don’t want a pat on the back, or pity. Ask anyone who has survived combat and each of them will tell you “we just want it [death] to end.” We don’t want accolades, although they often come, and we don’t want critics’ opinions. He adds that their approach to music and fame has remained unchanged since the beginning: “I value support and friends more than being a nationally known act” and Gabe has been quite successful with letting the music speak for the band, as they often get calls and requests from touring acts to go on the road with them.

After leaving the Army, Gabe got damn good at saying “no, fuck you, I’m not doing that” and it shows wildly in Manhigh’s approach to touring, playing gigs, and in their sound, which encapsulates a sort of “space-time ripple” (Gambino), that I witnessed on the stage at Echoes. Gabe is also “big on vulnerability” and says “that the rewards and opportunities are far better if you put your [authentic] self out there.” When performing, “Manhigh is the purest version of ourselves in that moment” and I think that’s one of the most profound statements I’ve ever heard from a rock band, or anyone learning how to live purposefully in that given moment; one that will never be replicated.

Ray Gutierrez has been playing music and melting faces longer than most readers and fans have been walking around, aimlessly on this earth. Ray is now that cool, humble, yet formidable uncle that we all love, or wished we had on our crew. He knows how to jam, roll with the punches, and knows what it takes to keep doing the damn thing. Ray is that older sergeant major that despises ceremony and bureaucracy, but will be the last damn man standing after a friendly, yet intense bar fight, smiling, with a beer in his hand, waiting for the rest of the bloodied lads to belly up to the bar with him. His energy will either embrace you as blood, or condemn you to your final resting place. After the show at Echoes, Ray came up to me and looked at me intensely in my eyes, extended his right hand, and said with a gravelly deep voice “thanks for coming up front, brother” and without another word spoken, I knew Ray was the quiet warrior that doesn’t say much, but when he does, it comes from a place of divine brotherhood, respect, and gratitude.

The success and achievements of Manhigh are not known to most of us, but to Gabe, whose biggest musical influence is Queens of the Stone Age, they are larger than life. Manhigh recorded at Joshua Tree's Rancho de la Luna studio with Dave Catching. Gabe said the energy, talent, and intensity in and around Joshua Tree, after only two separate sessions in the studio, boosted the band to the next level. They also caught the eyes and ears of an Australian rock journalist and photographer, and she came up to the States to see Manhigh perform in conjunction with her west coast concert coverages. Manhigh put on a special tribute concert for the journalist, during Covid, in a closed session at Red Gorilla Studios in Albuquerque. Karen Lowe, all the way from Perth, Australia, had a front row seat to the show and Manhigh was thrilled to be able to show immeasurable gratitude to the journalist that ranked “Sorry Doll” as one of the Top 5 Best Rock Songs of 2019. In the world. How does an Aussie rock journalist find a band from Albuquerque, New Mexico, then give them the honor of top five rock singles in the world? I reckon it was a combination of Karen Lowe’s tenacity and Manhigh’s talent. When music is good (relatable), and the momentum fires off a few rocket boosters, the rest sort of fills the grey matter with chem trails and epic memories. And if you ever read this, Karen Lowe, you now have a new fan and friend in a country where we could use more positive and uplifting journalism to cover space and time-bending rock music.

Manhigh has upcoming shows booked for Roswell, Albuquerque, Bisbee, and Tucson, and I look forward to catching more of the power duo this year. Gabe, now filled with love and support from an incredible and beautiful human, Samantha, and a new baby, has to juggle adult responsibilities with music, barber-instructor school, being a barber, and writing new music with Ray. The duo has scorched the west coast, Europe, and Australia with their gripping and haunting space jam sound, yet continues to live grounded, in a sense that empowers them to pick and choose when and where they play, no longer feeling the pressure to constantly grind. Manhigh, a band name and a pre-space-age theory that proved human life is sustainable in uncomfortable and harsh environments, shows us the only limits to how high a human artist can ascend, are those imposed by the human itself. - Joe Smith: Stringer