This week we catch up with Seattle’s Sandrider featuring awesome footage from the recent Good To Die label showcase at the Highline! With Jon Weisnewski and Nat Damm from Akimbo, as well as The Ruby Doe’s Jesse Roberts rounding out the line-up, Sandrider is one of the cities’ fiercest live acts, and I’m sure their self-titled LP on Good To Die will top many local Best of the Year album lists. Nik Christofferson, or you may know him as Seattle Rock Guy, has done an outstanding job building a label home and fostering a sense of community for Seattle’s thriving loud rock scene. If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend you stop by his Good To Die site and see what the brother’s got cookin’…Below we have video of Sandrider performing “The Corpse,” as well as a yet unnamed track. Iggy Pot’s Sandrider and Good To Die write-up follows the jump, so check it out when you got the time! CONTINUE READING
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VIDEO: Sandrider: “The Corpse” Live @ Highline [YOUTUBE]
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VIDEO: Sandrider Live @ Highline [YOUTUBE]
BUY DOWNLOAD: AMAZON BUY DOWNLOAD: BUY CD: INSOUND
The first record I bought after moving to Seattle in 1999 was an Akimbo and Teen Cthulhu split 10″ out on Cthuhlu’s old label Rock and Roleplay, and which I picked up after a show down at the Graceland! I had spent the previous four years working as a geologist’s assistant living in a college town in the Colorado Rockies known for it’s population of trustafarians, Blue Grass aficionados, and acid jazzheads, so I was more than primed to find some sort of new, musical punch in the face. Akimbo didn’t headline that night down at the Graceland, but to me Jon Weisnewski and Nat Damm stole the show, and I was more than stoked to take home some vinyl, wondering how it could possibly contain the sonic fury I’d just witnessed. The record delivered as advertised with Akimbo’s side containing complete aural chaos holding more screams per groove of wax than I’d heard to that date, and the spooky haunted house ambience with echoey dogs barking and wind howling was a wickedly nice touch too!
Watching Weisnewski and Damm playing in their newer project, Sandrider, with The Ruby Doe‘s Jesse Roberts on bass, it’s almost hard to believe these guys have been at it for thirteen plus years, but in that time you better bet they have been absolutely essential to keeping Seattle’s hard rock scene vital! Sandrider began as a side-project several years back when Jon Weisnewski, Akimbo’s bassist/vocalist decided he wanted to pick up the guitar again. Working with his longtime buddy and Akimbo rhythm mate Nat Damm on drums, things really began to click after Ruby Doe cofounder Jesse Roberts came down to play bass, and what seems to have started as a way to pass time between working on their main projects slowly coalesced into a new start for the three.
After playing out around Seattle for the past several years, the band finally released their debut, self-titled LP this past fall on Good To Die Records. The album was recorded at Red Room Recording in Seattle by Matt Bayles whose excellent work with bands like Isis, Mastodon, and Russian Circles had helped accentuate those band’s pummeling chthonic power, as well as their ability to craft soaring melodies. On the last Akimbo release, the 2008 concept album Jersey Shores (Neurot), Weisnewski and Damm, with guitarist Aaron Walters, had really pushed their sound towards such nuanced dynamics, while Jesse Roberts’ work with The Ruby Doe had often utilized changes in musical texture, tone and volume on tracks like “Second Son of a Second Son” or “UR2” to help relay the drama, and to tell the stories of those songs. With Bayles at the helm, each of the seven tracks on the Sandrider LP sound monumental as they move through varied but always dry and searing terrain, with plenty of attention paid to the tight interplay between guitar, bass, and drums. Like Isis, Mastodon, or Russian Circles, the guys in Sandrider long ago digested the lexicon of stoner metal, but while those bands for the most part remain genre specific in their sound, Sandrider’s crossbreeding of metal and punk bears more resemblance to the glory days of grunge when bands like Nirvana, Mudhoney, Tad, etc. blurred those lines to create an often extreme sound, but one that caught your ear, and could hold broad appeal!
If you haven’t yet come out to see Sandrider ripping through tracks like “The Corpse”, “Voices”, or “The Judge”, you are missing one of Seattle’s finest live bands capable of delivering just the kind of sonic ass-whooping you might need to relieve those work-a-day blues! Live Eye Tv caught up with the band and Nik Christofferson of Good To Die Records for the label’s recent showcase at the Highline. Nik’s blog work as Seattle Rock Guy, his tireless show promotion, and now his label endeavor have created a home for Seattle’s thriving loud rock scene! Bands like Dog Shredder, Absolute Monarchs, Brokaw, Deadkill, and Sandrider put on high voltage live shows, and watching any of these bands while jammed into a sweaty, rowdy space like the sold-out Comet, and you will feel the palpable sense of community and kinship growing around this label and the bands on it!
