Sleazegrinder picks out another band for your consideration!

Rock n’ roll is rife with contradictions, but even a world-weary seen-it-all like yours cruelly was taken aback by Main Line Riders. Not since the feminist slasher flick have two more disparate sub-genres smooshed themselves together with such a grand flourish. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Christian sleaze rock!

To be honest, I originally had no idea, listening to MLR’s hook-heavy, rubber-legged raunch, that they were godly types. Chug-a-lugging, GN’R fueled party-wreckers like “Throwin’ Bones to the Wolves” and “Chrome and Steel” sound, on first blush, just as sin-chomping and hell-blazing as anything that’s landed in my “All-sleaze” pile, so if you would have told me they were meth-snorting bikers from Transylvania, I woulda bought it. But they are not. MLR guitar player/founder Cliff Powell spent a goodly amount of the 00’s in The Huntingtons, a gooey-chewy, Ramones-obsessed power-pop/punk band based in Baltimore. When the Huntingtons dissolved in ’05, Cliffy formed glam-punk band The Stivs, but left the band soon after when, as he told Christian Metal Realm, “I received a message that I believe was from God that led me to leave The Stivs and start my first ever evangelical band.”

And so Cliff moved to Texas and did exactly that. He formed the band, and called it the Main Line Riders. They spread the gospel with tight pants and Kiss riffs.

In 2007, Main Line Riders released their first album, the hard-charging, AC/DC-fried Shot In the Dark. It garnered high praise from heathens and true believers alike. Part of the band’s appeal is that, unless you ask them, there’s no real outward signs that they’re on the side of good, and most of Shot in the Dark just sounds like classic hard-luck hard rock. They even cover Junkyard on it, man. Anyway, somewhere between there and here, Cliff moved back to the Baltimore area, got some new players in the band, and recorded/released one (ahem) hell of a sophomore album, “Worldshaker”.  It sounds…well, I guess it sounds like Buckcherry, if Buckcherry went to church on Sunday.

Anyway, draw your own conclusions. Like most rock journalists, I am as godless and soulless as you can get, and I still dig it. Here, courtesy Main Line Riders and Retroactive, is “We are the Ready Ones”, from Worldshaker.

If you like what you hear, let ‘em know at  www.myspace.com/mainlineriders

Worldshaker will be released on Retroactive Records on Sept 14th.

- Sleaze