Perdition Hymns

Anyone who ever yearned for a harder attack from The Black Crowes would do well to turn up the volume on Night Horse’s 2010 sophomore album, Perdition Hymns. The opening song, “Confess to Me,” fires on high octane–injected Southern rock that blends the Texan growl of early ZZ Top vinyl with the denim-clad Georgia boogie of the Crowes' The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion. Similarly, “Angel Eyes” blasts hard-strutting six-string riffs with frontman Sam James Velde belting it out like Chris Robinson fronting Uriah Heep. With slide guitar leads and the dusty warble of an old Hammond B-3 organ, the slower-paced “Black Cloud” sounds so authentically steeped in Georgia soul-rock that it’s hard to believe that Night Horse is a Los Angeles band. Not to be so easily pigeonholed, the group can turn on a dime and change up its sound. See “Goodnight Gone,” which turns up the fuzzbox and Sabbath-esque rhythms to recall the top-shelf bands that peppered Man’s Ruin Records in the late '90s. The band closes with a smoky, Memphis-flavored cover of Don Nix’s “Same Old Blues.”