Category: Music Reviews

Today, Bay Area-raised Los Angeles-based band Provoker released a new feel-good single, ‘Pantomime’ with the Sean Stout-directed video. It comes from their forthcoming project, ‘Mausoleum’, out on May 9 via YEAR0001. It is the follow-up track to ‘Another Boy’, which arrived with a video directed by Andrea Riba below.

Speaking about ‘Pantomime’, vocalist Christian Crow Petty shares, “I wanted to write a song that felt baroque – loosely about the town fool falling in love with a debutant or something – but the main theme revolves around how falling in love feels like a descent into madness. I was inspired by this Shakespeare quote, ‘Sleeping or waking, mad or well-advised?’ The song and visual are supposed to be sort of nauseating like you’re so intoxicated by the reward system that you don’t realise how deeply you’ve sunk into hysteria.”

As part of the celebration for ‘Mausoleum’, Provoker will embark on their headline North American tour this May and June, which will kick off following their performance at Cruel World Festival in Pasadena, California on May 17. The nineteen-date run will see Provoker—across the country—with support from RIP Swirl and Faerybabyy.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQyn2z2hgYk&h=315]

Provoker’s forthcoming album is thematically rooted in feelings of isolation—but practically—it is one of the most communal and collaborative projects the band has ever made, executive-produced by esteemed producer Kenneth Blume. The band’s Christian Crow Petty, Jonathon Lopez and Wil Palacios workshopped ideas together in studio sessions, born out of Petty’s thoughts of hauntings whilst holed up in an Echo Park attic. The album also enlists additional production from accomplished friends like Elliot Kozell (Yves Tumor, SZA), Simon Christensen (Gunna, Young Thug), Mikey Freedom Hart (Blood Orange, Lana Del Rey) and Zach Fogarty (Jean Dawson, Eyedress).

On ‘Mausoleum’, Provoker’s signature darkness has grown even bolder, sharpened and synthesised with the addition of Blume’s production and other outside perspectives. Petty and Lopez’s songwriting partnership delves deeper on the album, shifting the focus from supernatural creatures and the sci-fi of their cinematic influences to a world more rooted in our own reality and the hauntings of our own personal struggles. Those revelations are couched in the band’s characteristically vivid imagery of grotesquerie but capture all-too-familiar feelings of the struggles of self-worth, relationships and redemption.

For the uninitiated, Provoker began as a solo effort from musician Jonathon Lopez to create scores for horror and sci-fi films. After joining forces with vocalist and songwriter Christian Crow Petty and bassist Wil Palacios, Provoker released their debut full-length album as a trio with Body Jumper in 2021 and followed up with their 2023 release Demon Compass, which Alternative Press described as “uniquely emotional and addicting”. The band has toured alongside the likes of Viagra Boys, Beach Fossils, Turnover, glaive, TR/ST and spent 2024 touring across North America, including festival sets at Sound & Fury, Viva PHX and Substance Fest.

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Upcoming Live Dates

*= w/ support from RIP Swirl and Fearybabyy

5/17 – Pasadena, CA @ Cruel World
5/28 – Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom*
5/30 – Austin, TX @ The Ballroom*
5/31 – Houston, TX @ White Oak Downstairs*
6/02 – Atlanta, GA @ Purgatory*
6/03 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle Back Room*
6/05 – Washington, DC @ The Atlantis*
6/06 – Columbus, OH @ A&R Music Bar*
6/07 – Philadelphia, PA @ Ukie Club*
6/10 – Boston, MA @ The Sinclair*
6/11 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg*
6/13 – Toronto, ON @ Axis Club*
6/14 – Detroit, MI @ El Club*
6/15 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall*
6/17 – Kansas City, MO @ recordBar*
6/19 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater*
6/20 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Soundwell*
6/21 – Boise, ID @ Shrine Social Club*
6/23 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret*
6/24 – Seattle, WA @ Neumos*

‘Mausoleum’
Provoker
May 9, 2025
YEAR0001

1 Swarm of Flies
2 Tears In The Club
3 Prisoner of Love
4 Pantomime
5 Germaphobe
6 Another Boy
7 Gun2MyHead
8 Glow In The Dark
9 Mausoleum
10 Singing Gun
11 Replay