Friday, July 22, 2011

Live Review: Doomriders San Francisco Bath House Wellington



I have to admit before the gig announcement I'd never heard of the band Doomriders. I was curious though after finding out the kind of music they were and the price of the show, seemed like it could be a cheapish chance to catch a band from a genre I'm not a huge listener of. With this band being a stoner rock/stoner metal/hard rock sounding band I was quite interested. Now once reading further about this band I noticed guitarist/vocalist was none other than the bassist from Converge Nate Newton I was again further encouraged to check them out. Now obviously I checked out the bands albums before I made a final decision on going, after checking out both studio albums Black Thunder and Come Alive it was definite that I liked the band and this could be a lot of fun.

Before Doomriders they had 3 support bands, I unfortunately missed the first Old Loaves I believe they were called and only saw the end of the second Entrails. Entrails stuff I wasn't big on, didn't really like the screams but my friend at the gig said the early stuff on their set was a lot different to the stuff I caught, lots more speed metal tracks as oppoed to the more core stuff I caught, A shame I missed it. Now the last support was I Exist, this is a band from Australia with a large amount of possible touring members depending on whose available. I have to say I thought they were a pretty solid live act and quite polished for an act that has different members at times. The hardcore music isn't my favourite of the metal genres but I felt they had a pretty solid set and a song about Unicorns (even if it was about how sick they are). During their set I got the chance to see some Hardcore dancing for the first time, I found it hilarious particularly the one that only knew one dance move and chose to do that the whole set.

Now Doomriders were finally up and without being a huge fan of theres I was blown away almost instantly with the energy they possessed on stage. Nate was really great as a frontman you could see how much passion he has on stage and even the fact hes for once the focal point of the band. The fast hard rock tunes being played were great, the anger and evilness in some of the songs really shone through well. The set consisted of songs mainly off Darkness Comes Alive and included some of the songs i enjoyed most in the few listen I gave them. Some of the tracks I really enjoyed them playing were Heavy Lies A Crown (one of my favourites from the band), Knife Wound, Jealous God and my most favourite of the set was The Equalizer. That song i wasn't so fond of when listening to the album, but live it explodes out with so much power and strength the song drags you in so quick, great head banging track. Instrumentally everything was really tight sounding, the lead guitarist Chris Pupecki had some strong sounding guitar work that allowed Nate to really get the crowd going and show off all his energy.

Overall this was a fun gig for me, not often I go see bands that play this type of music and at the price I paid for my ticket ($24) it was well worth the fun that was had. They certainly converted me into a bigger fan of the back of this and shall definitely give the next album (whenever that happens) a listen.

Overall Rating: 8/10

To end I shall give you a story from the night, pretty embarrassing considering who it was I was talking to. I decided to buy both Doomriders albums on Vinyl (a steal at $20 a piece), I had realised the guy was in the band but had no idea which member he was. I ask "which one of the band are you?" to which I got the reply "huh?" so I say "who are you?" and this stage he being very nice replies "I'm Nate" "from Converge?" Nate: "Yeah", "dude I love Converge". Nate "thanks man".

Seriously awkward shit, to compound this I went back a few minutes later to get him to sign them, seemed generally interested in talking to the fans while selling merchandise.

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