Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Doomriders - Darkness Come Alive

Doom, Gloom, and Rock & Roll?
Aside from the very metallic hardcore tendencies, Converge's Nate Newton has a primary side project when Converge is not playing a show. Doomriders contains the bassman on guitars as well as Cave In drummer J.R. Connors playing very fun and catchy death 'n' roll and punk influenced stoner rock ever since their 2005 debut Black Thunder on Jacob Bannon's Deathwish Inc. Four years later with occasional live performances and splits with Coliseum and Swedish d-beat kings Disfear, Nate and the riders finally have time to record new attractive material before their holds on their main bands and their own new pieces.

Darkness Come Alive in terms of how it's recorded differs from Black Thunder as the latter was recorded live with all instruments present and playing simultaneously while Darkness followed conventional tracking. Although it feels like the fun and jam factor disappeared, it resulted with songs having more detail and attention resulting with a good amount of focus. The first half of the seventeen songs have good hooks especially in the harmony chorus in "Come Alive" but the second half is where the riders step up in their riffing game. "Jealous God" stays doomed up yet has a melody that can encourage the crowd to flood the group sing along and "Mercy" as well as "Bloodsucker" adds the Black Flag esque hardcore element to the stoner fuzzed grooves. Thank goodness those grooves are audible as I thank Kurt Ballou for having clarity and dynamics instead of density and intensity.

Good thing Nate actually pursued Doomriders as he deserves some prominence when doing his work on Converge and even in Old Man Gloom. Show your glory!

8/10

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