Armada (Gate)

Things move at a different pace in the damp cold of the Northwest. Maybe that's why Black Flag's My War-era went over so well in Seattle while the rest of the country were agitated by it's menacing crawl. Maybe that's why the mid-tempo weight of grunge eclipsed Californian thrash metal in the early '90s. And if it seems that Puget Sound lethargy has yielded too much sad-sucker folk-rock and indie-twee in recent years, let Sandrider remind you of Washington's long history of crushing thunderhead riffs. On their 3rd full length album, Seattle's Sandrider continues to staunchly refuse to do anything other than be the fiercest, grittiest, riff-driven rock band possible. Armada is an immaculately rendered documentation of the fury and fortitude of Sandrider, and Seattle's stalwart brutal rock label Good to Die is proud to release the Matt Bayles ((Mastodon, ISIS, The Sword) engineered album to the masses on vinyl and digital formats.