You may have caught this New York guitar, keys, and drums trio on tour with Minus the Bear in November, and their live show is where they excel. Don't be put off by their instrumental tendency, as they seriously know how to rock. Think The Fucking Champs, but a little more diverse.

The New York guitar-keys-drum trio plays tight, tense metallic fusion (most tracks are three minutes and under) with a deep-funk pocket, as if John McLaughlin had formed his Mahavishnu Orchestra with Art Neville and Zigaboo Modeliste of the Meters. Think of these pieces as frenetic scores for imaginary short films (they have titles to match: "Apache Chicken," "French Exit," "Nife Fite on Wife Nite"). Or just dig guitarist Jake Garcia's outbreaks of Ritchie Blackmore when he gets a bit of soloing room.

...Another collection of sonically crashing instrumentals that straddle prog rock, fusion, hard rock, and stoner rock. Darediablo never discriminates between those influences.... Yes, these guys rock and rock hard, but they don't dumb it down....

Imagine, if you will, a trio from the Big Apple playing heavy rock somewhat akin to an instrumental Deep Purple, but with monstrous organ and some subtle nods to vintage R&B. That's Darediablo, dudester. Abstruse comparisons aside, guitarist Jake Garcia could give Dr. Ritchie Blackmore a lesson or two in interesting rhythm parts, as his Van Halen-esque hybrid picking makes for some memorable riffs amid the disc's crushing atmosphere. Leadwise, it's all bare-bones tone and fills a la Neil Young, but Garcia knows that it's his rhythm work that makes or breaks each song.

...[Darediablo] blew out the grateful eardrums of the screaming rockers attending the Southern Records showcase. Fueling the group's drive was Chad Royce on drums and Jake Garcia, who plays guitar with pickless virtuosity.... This band has no need for bass guitar or vocals. Holford's "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Awesome" T-shirt had lost all sense of irony by the end of the set. He — and the band — are awesome.

Opening on the title track of their fifth release, the Terry Gilliam-like CD cover comes to life like Time Bandits. In the midst of chaos, a tease of Sergio Leone howls, just in case you missed the drum beat counting off paces as guitar and organ duel it out like wily old gunfighters. When all hell finally breaks loose, the guitar having lived to crow about it, this 5 1/2 minute film has just about paid the price of admission. Its stomping, scratching follow-up, "Apache Chicken," launches a hail of arrows. "The Bells of Goliad" ring in epic waves, rippling into the organ and drum drama "Billy Got Worse." "Nite Fite on Wife Nite" features guitarist Jake Garcia's yakety yak and Matt Holford's shrill answer, the overall effect being like your average shower that ends with Janet Leigh eyeballing the drain. Drummer Chad Royce cameos Hitch. "Lonely Is the Stranger in the Rainbow of the Heat of the Still of the Night" almost goes Whitesnake one better, while closer "French Exit" is the perfect bookend to Twenty Paces, 11 serial installments that feel like you just spent the afternoon in a darkened theatre ducking bullets.

The NYC trio create an instrumental tapestry that draws on all the best parts of '70s fusion, metal, prog and funk in fashioning a musical pastiche that never drags or sinks under any weighty conceptual pretensions. On Twenty Paces, ...Darediablo never forgets that they're playing rock music — majestic and eclectic and wildly unpredictable rock music.

This is really good. I mean REALLY good.... I see Darediablo as the great rock 'n' roll unifier — where headbangers, jam-heads, hardcore kiddies and prog snobs can all slap backs and drop jaws in mutual admiration of a tremendous talent.... Twenty Paces will definitely be on a whole lotta top ten releases for '05. Including mine.

This trio takes the Trans Am vision and then burns holes in every expectation. This is music that excites on all levels. There's the visceral rush of the riffage, which is consistently awe-inspiring. And then there are the softly-spoken lines in the background, the stuff that is worth pondering for an age or two. Some albums simply scream "Listen to me again and again" from the first note. This is one of those....

The sound is at once mellifluous and jarring, tremendous and ultimately groovy. Think of Ui, but with a tinge of metal.

Darediablo still nobly transcend every other meatheaded hard rock cliché by consistently pushing out thick, unadorned, intellectual rock and roll -- complete with compelling grooves, unremitting force, and lots of opportunities for bookshelf-shaking blasts.

Darediablo is the kind of band that hits so hard you don't even realize you haven't heard any lyrics until the third song. And when we say hard, we mean hard-rock hard, especially with those rock opera-like keyboards. It's mesmerizing. Like a time warp to a front-row viewing of the Who. But you don't have to travel through time, you simply must travel through SPACE. At 538 Congress Street in Portland, you can bang heads....

This mostly instrumental local trio (bass, Rhodes, organ, drums, and the occasional dual-neck bass and six-string guitar) rock with more power and finesse than most bands twice their size and wattage.

NYC's Darediablo are all instrumental, letting a rumbling bass, guitar, Fender Rhodes electric piano, and drums do all the talking..... Think Ummagumma-era Pink Floyd with occasional whiffs of Deep Purple....

The more I listen to this, the more I really love this thing...rocking, intricate, innovative, complex, emotional. Everything good about Darediablo comes to a head in the awe-inspiring "Shipping & Handling". Oh man.... Not that everything before that isn't exceptional, it's just that "Shipping & Handling" is one of those rare musical pieces that makes you scream out "Fucking A! these guys good!" even if no one is there.

Darediablo is a smoking, sometimes atmospheric, bass-drum-organ trio that comes on like Medeski Martin & Wood with an MC5 fixation.

"Instrumental rock from NYC" begins the press page, and I'm thinking, are you out of your frigging mind? Nobody plays instrumental rock in this town, or any town, any more. Didn't you get the memo? But then the opener, "Sigurd the Dragon," starts playing away, and I'm thinking back to the days when songs didn't have time limits to make airplay, when bands like Rainbow had a heavy, organ-based rock thing going on, and all of a sudden I'm lost in the music. The cool thing about these songs is the movement, that the instrumentals don't sound like snippets for segments on Sportscenter, and that they really cook. The bass sound in particular is big and heavy, and you can really feel the weight of the strings. Big plus also goes to the Fender Rhodes/Hammond B-3 work of keyman Matt Holford. Guitarist Jake Garcia is a riot, and drummer Chad Royce pounds the skins like he's on a mission. The most fun I've had in a long time.

If you're one to cringe when you think of instrumental rock, then you haven't heard this band. Mastering atmospheric spaciousness of Floyd, this NY trio weaves layers of guitar, distorted organ, bass, Fender Rhodes, and drums, flinging your woes to the wind. Particularly popular among cdbaby employees.

Oscuri, settantiani, progressivi e molto bravi. Questi sono gli ingedienti di questo trio newyorkese capitanati dal tastierista Matt Holford, Jake Garcia alla chitarra e basso e il bravo Chad Royce alla batteria . Brani strumentali con Hammond in primo piano, una sorta di Niacin piu' dark dove di certo non e' la chitarra la protagonista. Interessanti i brani Sigurd The Dragon Slayer, Bedtime Stories e Weasel. Ottima la produzione e grande tasso tecnico per questi tre musicisti. Devo dire che il vero genio del gruppo e' Matt che riesce a dare una grossa impronta e svolta a tutti i brani presenti nel dischetto ... continuate così!

(4 of 5 stars)

Darediablo do not deserve a geek-label like "prog rock," no matter how many people around me were using the phrase. They're such down-to-earth fellas. If David Lynch ever wanted a real mofo rock score to any of his fucked-up noir-ish films, he should call on bassist/guitarist Jake Garcia, keyboardist Matt Holford, and drummer Chad Royce. The instrumental sledgehammer that is this band combines the better parts of Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Black Sabbath, and some Rage Against the Machine. Brownies was packed with enthusiastic fans of all ages, and the applause for Darediablo was genuine -- not "I'm clapping 'cause the song's over," but "I'm clapping 'cause that stuff rocked." Amazing what happens when you get three incredibly skilled musicians together on one stage. The band keeps its feet firmly grounded in rumbling TNT-charged energy, but nevertheless gets a nod from the experimental school of noisemaking. No wonder Darediablo draw such a crowd.

All three members — keyboardist Matt Holford, guitarist/bassist Jake Garcia and drummer Chad Royce — have a percussive style of playing, which coalesces into a loud, doomy sound that is intense and streamlined while almost never crossing into dullness or repetitiveness. Holford's organ and electric piano are usually charged with carrying the melody and filling the foreground, and he is more than up to the task. Garcia creates thick but not overly dense soundscapes on both instruments; his bass work is often drenched in fuzz for similar impact to his guitar playing. Royce is a hard hitter with a no-frills style perfectly suited for the band's arrangements, some of which evoke death marches. It adds up into a brooding cacophany that could only have come from the Big Apple. Certain tracks sound like recreations of nighttime traffic jams in Lower Manhattan.

...pushing rock's boundaries from the outside in.

...[S]hould Zony Mash decide to slip into the water up to their ankles and share a beer with Medeski and cronies, we have Darediablo! Darediablo is a slamming funkgroove monster from NYC that definitely calls to mind both aforementioned groups, but with a much more bass-driven sound.

Darediablo have unleashed such a monster with Tunnel of Fire that they have taken the [funkgroove] kingdom by force...great songwriting & adventurous ideas....