By Storm Review: Breathing Life Into a Cathartic New Chapter

Club Cheek, Brixton

"It's gonna be okay..."

Performing under a new moniker, the rapper-producer hip-hop duo return not to erase the past of their beloved Injury Reserve, but to expand upon it and unleash a new enticing chapter; peered into on this intimate night in London's South end.

When Injury Reserve released By the Time I Get to Phoenix in 2021, it felt like both an ending and a transfiguration. The loss of Jordan Alexander “Stepa J.” Groggs in 2020 left the group fractured, and yet the surviving duo, rapper Ritchie With a T and producer Parker Corey, refused to let grief calcify. Their music instead became a vessel for it: experimental, frayed, and deeply human.

At Brixton’s newly-vetted club, the crowd hums and simmers with reverence. There’s a sense of communion—a coming together—rather than unbridled hype. Early in the set, Ritchie jokes through a broken sampler and an audible “It’s gonna be okay,” a line that lands like a mission statement. If By the Time I Get to Phoenix was an elegy, tonight feels like a tentative step toward healing.

The set unfolds like a storm gathering over slow motion. Opener 'Simmering' lives up to its name—a brooding, low-lit track where lingering guitar lines stretch into space while Ritchie’s auto-tuned vocals flicker between fragility and defiance. 'It’s Not in the Picture' builds from that stillness into something atmospheric and celestial, with Corey’s production breathing and brooding like a living organism.

Momentum swells on their recent single 'In My Town', Ritchie’s verses surging with frustrated energy. The crowd latches onto the chorus (“They say anything can go anywhere in my town”) like a mantra, echoing it back with a collective pulse that feels almost cathartic. The song’s extended outro channels Radiohead’s 'Videotape'; delicate, syncopated, a slow unspooling of tension.

As the set deepens, the emotional gravity grows heavier. 'Double Trio', the duo’s debut single, remains a masterstroke—part eulogy, part exorcism. Jazz-flecked drums skitter through digital interference, Ritchie raps about pain “scramblin’ both my hands,” and the audience mirrors that ache, nodding alongside something raw and unresolved.

Newer material like 'It’s for All of Us' and 'Zig Zag' hint at the direction By Storm is heading: still glitchy and abrasive, but with a newfound melodic core. Ritchie oscillates between rapping and spoken word, his voice at once distant and deeply intimate (“The past-tense roaming on the gravity / In my arms floating on the gravity”). Corey’s production is technical yet strangely emotional—an intricate lattice of texture and distortion that keeps the duo untethered from genre.

The crowd erupts for 'Superman That', one of Injury Reserve’s most beloved and brutal cuts. “Ain’t no savin’ me or you,” Ritchie wails, the line shouted back like a shared, unadulterated confession. It’s followed by 'Knees' and 'Bye Storm', two songs that serve as emotional linchpins between past and present. When Ritchie cries out (“Please, is there any way I could grow?”) it’s no longer rhetorical—it’s a plea met with roaring empathy.

By the time 'Don’t Let Me Go' closes the night, the palpable mood is one of exhausted gratitude. This isn’t a comeback; it’s a continuation. By Storm carry the legacy of Injury Reserve not as a burden, but as proof that creation can exist alongside grief—that it can even grow from it. In an underground hip-hop landscape increasingly defined by genre fluidity (Brian Ennals & Infinity Knives, Billy Woods, McKinley Dixon), the duo stand apart—not just for their sound, but for the rawness of their humanity; a legacy which lives on through Ritchie's resounding words of consolation.

8/10

By Storm's latest single 'In My Town' is out now via By(e) Storm and can be found below.

Photo is courtesy of Onome Uyovbievbo whose work can be found here.