UPDATE: Royal Thunder has cancelled its performance in Jackson due to illness. Backwoods Payback and Bad Magic will still be performing at CS’s Restaurant.
Drummer Evan Diprima may provide a lot of the “thunder” of hard-rock band Royal Thunder, but he is actually the one of two later additions to the Atlanta four-piece. Guitarist Josh Weaver and vocalist Mlny Parsonz formed the earliest version of the outfit in the mid-2000s, bringing Diprima into the fold in 2012 and guitarist Will Fiore in 2015.
Diprima met his future band mates while playing with other rock groups around Atlanta and eventually stepped up to help when Royal Thunder needed a touring drummer to promote its debut full-length record “CVI” in summer 2012.
“Atlanta is just kind of this small community where all the musicians know each other or know of each other, and Josh just hit me up one day, asking basically if I could fill in for tour,” he says. “We got together, and then, within two weeks, I learned the set, we went out on the road, and then about half way through the tour, he asked me to join permanently.”
Both musically and personally, Diprima says that he clicked with the band instantly, but over time, it has also become a family.
“It’s not just business friendships,” he says. “We’re actually best friends, like brothers and sister.”
Fans got to hear what the whole family could create together with 2017’s “Wick,” Royal Thunder’s fourth studio release and its first to feature all four members. Diprima says their latest album continues the evolution of their sound from 2015’s “Crooked Doors,” his first recordings with the band, and is Royal Thunder’s most focused work to date. In part, that stems from the band coming into the studio with most of the song ideas for the album already in hand.