Multi-instrumentalist Carter Gravatt once identified Carbon Leaf’s genre as Brazilian Polka Metal. He was joking, obviously, but the Virginia quintet’s longstanding and successful melting pot of Indie Rock, Bluegrass, Celtic, Folk and Americana isn’t impossibly far from Gravatt’s fictional description. The band has been attracting an ever-widening circle of slavish fans for over a quarter of a century.
Carbon Leaf was born in 1992 on the campus of Ashland, Va.’s Randolph-Macon College and continued after graduation, playing the network of Virginia colleges and clubs along the Eastern seaboard before hitting the studio for its 1995 debut album, Meander. Over the next six years, Carbon Leaf maintained a constant road presence and self-released three more albums before signing with Vanguard Records. The band issued a trio of great albums through the revered Folk label, generating great press and broadening its audience. But by 2010, Carbon Leaf had tired of the label’s regimented approach to marketing and tour support and opted out of its contract to return to independent status with its own label, Constant Ivy. The band announced their Vanguard departure in March 2010 and had multiple new releases out by the end of the year — clear evidence of how quickly the group could work outside of traditional methods.
The band just released The Gathering Vol. 1, a five-song EP containing Carbon Leaf’s first new music in five years (it's reportedly the first of four such EPs). This could signal a fresh volley of material from the avowed masters of Brazilian Polka Metal.
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