(HRB) www.underride.net
Somewhere between here and there,
Underride have gone through a wild mutation from last of the pure-grunge
holdouts to the latest rock and roll juggernauts intent on saving the Rock
from an untimely demise. I liked them just fine when they were Seattle
orphans, cranking out minor-chord driven suicide rockers and tapping the
collapsed veins of Green River and Soundgarden, and I like them even
better now with this stellar, punchy production, a fearsome wall of sound
that's the aural equivalent of bringing a nuclear bomb to a gunfight. The
riffs pop out of the speakers like machine gun fire, the songs filled with
scorch and smoke and plenty of bleeding, with enough hooks to land them in
the arena, and enough firepower to burn it down to the ground. The
Reverend Al Camino's manly throat work has a lot to do with Underride's
encroaching global threat. He sounds like the classic heavy rock frontman-
dark, brooding and utterly convincing, like Henry Rollins leading Alice in
Chains into battle, and the rest of the band are a perfect complement,
flawless in execution and absolutely committed to rock until there ain't
no rock left. Personally, I have often daydreamed of being able to
fast-forward from 1989 to now- it would surely spare me a lot of trouble-
but Underride have gone ahead and done it, bypassing a decade's worth of
phony rock and roll and slamming you right back into the days when even
Tad was a rock star. Righteous. Underride operate like nu-metal and emo
and indie slacker pop never happened, and "Horsepower Kills" is
a convincing argument for how bad ass mainstream rock could be without all
those pussies.