The Dark Won't Hide You

Throughout its 2008 debut album for Tee Pee Records, you can hear Night Horse inching toward the classic Southern rock style that would garnish its 2010 sophomore album, Perdition Hymns. But as it stands, The Dark Won’t Hide You opens with “Don’t Need Your Lovin’”: a heavily distorted blues-rocker that has much in common with most recordings by the group's similarly named labelmates Drunk Horse. Aside from some high-registered screaming, frontman Sam James Velde even sings with the throaty croon of Drunk Horse’s Eli Eckert. The following title track is slightly simmered down into a bubbling cauldron of heavy Los Angeles rock that plays like a less glammy version of The Cult. Then “Wicked Love” kicks out a bellbottomed strut, with Velde sounding like Glenn Danzig fronting The Allman Brothers. Night Horse’s penchant for blasting blues leads through a tube amplifier’s equivalent of a 1970 Chevy Nova culminates in the hard punch of the standout song “Shine on Me.” This extends into “Worried Life Blues,” where Velde’s a cappella opening rant recalls Paul Stanley’s stage banter.