AT ALL COST’S MIKE CARRIGAN JOINS DARKEST HOUR
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 12:18pm by Axl Rosenberg
We’re late to the party on this one, but Darkest Hour have parted ways with guitarist Kris Norris. It’s very sad and blah blah blah and honestly, I don’t care that much. I like Darkest Hour but I’m just not emotionally involved enough in the idea of Norris remaining in the band for this to phase me the way, for example, news of Mark Morton leaving Lamb of God might.
What I do care about is that Norris’ replacement is Mike Carrigan (pictured above), a.k.a. lead guitarist for MetalSucks’ favorite underappreciated geniuses, At All Cost.
The state of At All Cost’s future has been unclear for some time now – the band is without a label, without a manager, without 2/5ths of their original line-up, and, by their own admission, not currently up to anything. I can’t imagine that Carrigan will be able to split his time between the two bands, but I also can’t imagine he’d just ditch AAC – so I take this to mean that At All Cost are officially officially done (Yes, twice as officially done as they were before.).
That’s sad, but it’s not like we didn’t see it coming – and the silver lining is that not only does Carrigan now not have to go to work at a Guitar Center or whatever, but a much wider audience will now get to appreciate his talents. And make no mistake: the guy is a killer guitar player and insanely fun to watch live.
Of course, Carrigan is gonne be “the new guy” for awhile, so I don’t know what contributions, if any, he’ll get to make to the next Darkest Hour album. But I’ll tell you one thing: Darkest Hour now have my full attention.
-AR
You’re damn right, eyes on DH. While I hate to see Norris go, DH lives on!! Sad that I didn’t get to see them that one last time when Norris’ kid was born and they dropped off the rest of the tour. And of course I missed Thrash and Burn because of work. Anyway, Dh will make it around again, and hopefully this new guy will mesh well and they’ll continue to make great music.
Funnily enough I only heard about Norris leaving myself about two days ago, and I love Darkest Hour, guess it’s time to get my head out from under the rock. This probably won’t affect me seeing as they’re hardly gonna be playing Ireland any time soon. But Mike Carrigan is a great guitar player so it’ll be interesting to see how this turns out, shame about At All Cost though =/
While I enjoy At All Cost and I’m sure their guitarist can play all the DH stuff, I’m very interested to see what happens with their next cd now. Afaik Kris Norris wrote most of the guitar stuff, and really was a driving force behind the band’s evolution.
Also, anyone who has a chance should see Darkest Hour live, they are great performers and put on an incredibly fun, energetic show. Especially if you see them at a show with a full bar haha.
loved DH for years, but they have been going downhill since undoing ruin was released… and in all honesty, norris was the ONLY reason i enjoyed seeing them live anymore.. thanks to his departure, DH is now off my radar
I guess I have now a reason to watch them live in Ecuador.
DH was pretty good live on the ATG tour this year. and their undoing ruin sits in my top 10 of all time. (other stuff, not so much). I’m down for their next cd though.
Did he change his name? Because I’m pretty sure his name is Mike Theobald.
Both are right, his name is Michael Carrigan Theobald.
@key: I was going to let Rob’s comment slide because Undoing Ruin is a more approachable album (it’s the one that got me into DH,) than the older stuff. But to say that Deliver Us wasn’t a masterpiece is doing a disservice to DH.
I went back to early days of DH and found that stuff rocks even harder than U.R. Mark of The Judas is pretty much my favorite song, and most of the guys in DH will admit that they think those weren’t their best tunes. Sadist Nation is their best album to date, maybe you should give it another listen? Read the liner notes, try to empathize with what this band has had to endure to bring you Undoing Ruin.
I admit (and i know this is rediculous) that I have seen Darkest Hour 12 times. That being said they were my very first metal show and Kris Norris and his guitar styles almost single handedly dragged me away from punk music (thank god). Now 8 years later and his departure, I don’t know how religiously i will follow DH. Kris has a killer side project going with some guys in GWAR called LOCUS FACTOR and i find myself listening to that as much as any DH record. We’ll see how DH hold up but as for me, I probably wont go see them as much anymore.
Sadist nation is the shit, favorite DH album and top 10 all time for me. Undoing ruin is also tits. Not sure how i feel about this move, gonna keep the jury out till i hear something gel. DH live is an event not to be missed for sure and as long as he can play all the old shit as well as contribute to new it should prove interesting
He kinda looks like greg weeks in that photo by the by.
Oh dang you said mark morton leaving lamb of god and i got all stoked.
Hmmm… well maybe the next darkest hour album will actually end up being something other than a boring mess of…thrash?
I now officially officially give a damn about Darkest Hour. Thanks for the heads up.
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