If the three bands name-checked in our headline aren’t enough to pique your interest, that’s not all: The Phoenix Born of Fire, Volume 1 compilation — put together by weekly New England arts mag The Boston Phoenix — also features free downloadable tracks from Ramming Speed (appearing at The Metal Suckfest!), Motherboar, Razormaze, Acaro, and a number of other Boston-area metal bands. Stream or download the whole thing for free on Bandcamp. Who knows, you may even discover a new band.

-VN

Thanks: Zack Wells

Total bummer news of the day: Converge have been forced to cancel the remainder of their current tour due to a health scare involving bassist Nate Newton (also of Old Man Gloom and Doomriders fame, in case you somehow didn’t know that). A statement from the band tells fans…

“Unfortunately on our day drive from St. Louis to Austin, one of our members had a serious health scare. We rushed him to the nearest ER were he was looked at by some fine Oklahoma doctors. After a night’s stay in the hospital and a battery of tests we were able to have him discharged earlier today. We are now racing (quite literally) to make it to our show at Chaos In Tejas, albeit extremely late, to play an abbreviated set. Wish us luck.

“Because of this health issue, we are canceling the remaining few shows of this current U.S. tour so he can get home and get some medical attention asap. To those in Little Rock, Nashville, and Raleigh, we will add you to our list of places for make up shows later down the road.

“Thanks to all of you for your continued support, it is appreciated by all of us.”

So’s that’s obviously scary and upsetting, but hopefully everything will work out okay. Like the headline says, we’re sending out good thoughts to Mr. Newton… feel free to do the same in the comments section!

-AR

According to a recent interview on Crustcake’s podcast, Doomriders and Sweet Cobra are teaming up to release a new Devo-themed 7″.

No, your eyes do not deceive you. I wrote “Devo-themed.”

Apparently, Doomriders will cover Devo’s “Girl U Want,” while Sweet Cobra will tackle the band’s “Gates of Steel.” I just went on YouTube to get videos of Devo’s original versions of both songs, and, hey, guess what? They performed each one as part of an appearance on the short-live Saturday Night Live rip-off, Fridays, back in 1981 (see below video). I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or if this performance served as the inspiration for the Doom Cobras team-up, but I do know I wanna hear this split ASAP:

There’s no official release date for the split yet, but it will come out sometime soon-ish on Hawthorne Street Records. The Doomriders’ track was produced by the great Kurt Ballou; Allen Epley and Eric Abert from the band The Life and Times produced the Sweet Cobra portion. I don’t really know The Life and Times’ music, but I do know that they’re Pelican-approved, so I’ll give ‘em the benefit of the doubt.

-AR

[via The PRP]

As excited as I inevitably get every time a headline involving any member of Cave In rolls through my RSS reader, if I’m being honest I haven’t been able to get that into any of the many non-Cave In projects released by members of Cave In. Everyone seems to love Doomriders, and I certainly like ‘em just fine… but the truth is they seem to fall just a little short of what they could and should be in theory. Ditto for Zozobra, who are probably my favorite associated non-Cave In band.

This holds especially true for all of Stephen Brodsky’s many side projects, bands and solo releases. Just can’t feel ‘em. I’d all but stopped paying attention until a headline on Heavy Blog is Heavy about new Stephen Brodsky solo material caught my eye, and I let curiosity get the best of me. And you know what? I’m glad I did, because this is pretty solid stuff (posted after the jump, natch).

Click to read more…

I can’t be the only one who was a tad bit disappointed with Doomriders’ 2009 album Darkness Comes Alive. It certainly wasn’t bad — au contraire, it was just fine, but I found it to be a bit long and lacking the hooks that made Black Thunder (and in particular its title track) so special. Truth is I just wanted every song to be a new version of “Black Thunder,” but that didn’t work out so well for me. And let’s be honest; any project that in some way involves a member of Converge will always have the metal blogosphere swinging from its nuts like a baboon in a banana factory, but this most recent Doomriders affair just wasn’t worth the hype.

Enter Chambers, a New Jersey outfit who remind me a whole lot of Doomriders’ blend of blues rawk boogie and hardcore energy. Noisecreep is streaming the Chambers song “Ripper” and it’s a doozy; Chambers don’t invoke the blatant Thin Lizzy twin-lead attack that’s a benchmark of Doomriders’ sound (at least not on this track) but they do use a scorching guitar solo as a critical piece of the song in a way that Doomriders don’t. The track is barely 2 minutes long, but it’s a pure shot of adrenaline delivered quickly and in just the right dose.

“Ripper” gets me all sorts of pumped to hear what else Chambers’ new record Old Love has to offer; I’ll find out on June 22nd when the record drops as a digital-only release (hooray future!). Listen to more Chambers at their official website.

-VN

When it comes to metal and hardcore, 2009 has been an exceptional year for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The legendary Cave In officially reunited, played some shows, and released the four-song Planets of Old 12″. Converge dropped the highly-anticipated Axe To Fall, considered by some to be as good as or even better than their benchmark album Jane Doe. Hell, that band’s bassist Nate Newton even managed to secure substantial attention and overwhelming praise for Darkness Come Alive, the latest from his Doomriders side-project. In this somewhat incestuous collection of talented New England musicians exists yet another amazing group called Disappearer, who have given us possibly the best album of the year.

Click to read more…

Axe to Fall, Converge’s once-again excellent new album, is yet another stylistic shift: the majority of it is devoted to the band playing harder and more technically than they have in their post-Jane Doe era, while the closing two songs finding them venturing further away from their comfort zone than they ever have before. But even though guitarist Kurt Ballou darts all over the fretboard more than usual, vocalist Jacob Bannon changes nothing about his performance, from the breathless rambling on opener “Dark Horse” to his trademark pterodactyl-like shriek over the course of the album. But this isn’t to say that he’s in a state of creative stasis while the rest of the band moves outwards: Bannon’s hellacious scream is just as much a part of Converge’s uniqueness as is Ballou’s nimble riffing. Bannon’s work on Axe to Fall is as savage as it’s ever been, and once again adds weight and disturbing depth to the album’s metallic hardcore-fueled chaos.

Jacob Bannon’s place in metal, hardcore, and—for better or worse—metalcore is massive, with his trademark vocals incalculably influential and lyrics favoring the abstract over the melodramatic. Even outside of Converge, Bannon manages to be prominent, with a successful visual art career and running hardcore label Deathwish Inc. A surprisingly normal sounding (at least in terms of how he sounds on record), introspective guy, Bannon comes off as both wise about the metal and hardcore world while still impressed by and interested in it. In a lengthy interview with MetalSucks, he discussed the musical and lyrical intricacies of Axe to Fall, his approach to artwork in comparison to his vocal work, and people’s changing attitudes toward heavy music as they age.

Click to read more…

As rabid Converge fans chomp at the bit for the imminent release of the highly anticipated Axe To Fall, bassist Nate Newton presents something far more accessible to digest in the brief interim with Darkness Come Alive. Perhaps the most viable and visable of that New England hardcore act’s side-projects, Doomriders treat the “doom metal” tag fairly loosely, using it more as a jumping off point than a modus operandi. Distinct from the fawning nostalgia of acts like Gates Of Slumber or The Sword, the project is a satisfying hodge-podge of classic metal influences tempered by a more modern framework.

Click to read more…

One of the most buzzed about new releases of the fall (along with Between the Buried and Me, Baroness, Converge and others) is Doomriders’ Darkness Comes Alive, out September 29th on Deathwish. For the uninitiated, the blues-tinged punk metal/rawk of Doomriders is played by Converge’s Nate Newton, Cave In’s John-Robert Conners, alongside Jebb Riley and Chris Pupecki. Bluesy breaks abound underneath furious hardcore vocals… think heavier Thin Lizzy riffs updated for the modern age.

Lucky for you the band has two brand new songs from Darkness Comes Alive streaming on their MySpace page, so you don’t have to take my word for it. You can also pre-order the record now in all sorts of nifty vinyl/CD/t-shirt configurations.

-VN

Straight out of the heavy music mecca that is Providence, Rhode Island, Howl kick so much ass that it’s not really funny but actually rather serious on account of the aforementioned painful ass kickings. Relapse recently released the band’s self-titled three-song EP, which is streaming at Howl’s MySpace and available to purchase here They’re heavy, unpretentious, and not easily pigeonholed into any one of the bandied about subgenres in this grand thing we call metal. I’ll leave it to the opinionated chicken-chokers that make it their lives’ work to define metal in our comments section, but I’d say if the adjective “sludgy” sounds appealing then you’re going to want to get in on the ground floor with Howl before they’re headlining bigger venues.

Click to read more…

Short n’ sweet: the always-awesome Doomriders played some shit on college radio station WMBR, and our bro-bros at Metal Injection have all the audio avail for free download. Check that shit out – it is wicked.

The new Doomriders album, Darkness Comes Alive, drops September 29 on Deathwish. Check out some songs from the record on this audio player (click on the top left album art to launch the player).

They’ve also just announced a tour with Kylesa and Tombs, which I imagine will be pret-ty sweet. Get dates here.

-AR

Last night Messieurs Neilstein, Wingerschmidt and Suarez attended the Brooklyn Vegan metal showcase at Club Europa where Wetnurse, Javelina, Howl, Clouds, Doomriders and a bunch of other sickly good metal bands slayed a devoted audience of Brooklyn metal die-hards.* Our hetero life-mates at Metal Injection were there to capture the rockage of Doomriders — the punk/noise/metal/blues-rawk band featuring Nate Newton of Converge and John-Robert Connors of Cave In — and they’ve already posted videos of four, count ‘em four, songs. Check them out performing “Black Thunder,” aka the best song ever, below, then after the jump check out footage of 3 brand new songs all set to appear on their forthcoming Deathwish Records summer release.

Click to read more…

What’s better than great music? Great music for free, of course! And we know you downloading motherfuckers agree with us, because you’re always e-mailing us about leaks n’ shit.

So why not download something that will neither a) make you feel guilty for stealing nor b) possibly condemn you to a life of living in a cage and being anally gang raped in the shower?

Deathwish have a new sampler, entitled MMIX, which they are making available for free download. And there’s some pretty cool artists on it, including Coliseum, Doomriders, The Hope Conspiracy, Converge’s Jacob Bannon, Pulling Teeth and Trap Them (who Vince and I don’t get but I know a lot of people really dig so I guess I should give them another chance).

After the jump, get the complete track list and download links.

Click to read more…

Here’s all you need to know about Doomriders:

1) Nate Newton of Converge, J.R. Connors of Cave In
2) dirty, beer-fueled, hardcore-tinged southern rawk (think: Thin Lizzy for the modern era)
3) Awesome.

While the band promised but didn’t deliver a new record in ’08, Lambgoat reports that ’09 is the year; the band is reportedly recording at Godcity Studios in Massachusetts as we speak with producer-of-the-moment / Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou at the helm (!). The band’s put 12 songs to tape and plans on releasing an album later this year. Peep this track for a preview of what you might be in for.

Doomriders – “Black Thunder”

-VN

Because seriously, the Doomriders jam that Crustcake posted today is the most fun thing I’ve heard in a while. The members have some serious hardcore pedigree — what with Nate Newton of Converge and J.R. Connors of Cave In filling the band’s ranks — but this is no annoying hardcore breakdown-fest. It’s fast, blues-based, Thin Lizzy-tinged southern groove rock n’ roll. If I didn’t know better and the vocals were an octave higher I’d suggest some ’80s sleaze influence and it might even be up Allyson’s alley at Bring Back Glam.

According to Lambgoat they’ll be releasing their second full-length later this year, which is great news considering how much ass this track kicks.

Doomriders – “Black Thunder”

-VN