17 JANUARY 9-15, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | FIND MORE MUSIC COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/MUSIC Back in the Saddle FOUR YEARS AFTER A TRAGIC DEATH, DENVER DOOM/SHOEGAZE BAND PALEHORSE/PALERIDER IS READY TO MOVE AHEAD. BY JASON HELLER Four years have passed since Nathan Marcy died, but his drums still stand in the practice space of his fi nal band, Palehorse/Palerider. “It was heavy, you know? I was humbled by it,” says Ryan Sims, the group’s current drummer, as he recalls the fi rst time he sat behind Marcy’s kit at rehearsal in 2022. Marcy succumbed to cancer in 2021; it took a year before his bandmates, singer-guitarist Brandon Richier and bassist David Atkinson, were able to pull Palehorse/Palerider back together. And this week, the band is releas- ing its fi rst new music in fi ve years, and the fi rst with Sims on drums: a single with the resonant title “Don’t Leave Me Behind.” “When I was fi rst learning how to play the old Palehorse stuff, I was trying to honor Nate’s spirit but also put my own spin on it,” Sims says. “When you’re listening to another drummer’s parts and playing his drums, it’s like being inside his head a little bit. I’m hearing what he was hearing. It’s a conversation or a lan- guage being spoken with someone who isn’t even there. I felt like I was almost talk- ing with him.” Sims, who also drums in Denver groups Dreadnought and Grief Ritual, had previously played in Green Druid, one of Colorado’s most in- ternationally recog- nized metal outfi ts, which signed to the legendary British la- bel Earache Records on the strength of a demo in 2017. That same year, just as both bands were getting off the ground, Green Druid and Palehorse/Palerider started play- ing shows together regularly at local venues such as 3 Kings (now HQ) and the hi-dive. Despite the two groups’ instant bond and mutual admiration, however, Palehorse/ Palerider’s music comes from a different place than Green Druid’s weed-fueled doom metal. Instead, Richier and company craft a more melodic and ethereal sound that draws equally from the heaviness of doom and the more warped, spacious drone of shoegaze. Palehorse/Palerider released its stunning debut album, Burial Songs, in 2017. Even though the record’s title was morbid and the band that made it took its name from an avatar of death in the Book of Revelation, the future looked full of life. Then Marcy started showing signs of illness that the rest of the band couldn’t help but notice. It took him months to open up to Richier and Atkinson: He had been diagnosed with cancer. “Nate just kept it very close to the vest,” Richier says of Marcy’s diagnosis. “He didn’t tell any of us that he was terminal until maybe about a month before he passed. Nate was just the type of person who didn’t want any- body to worry or be concerned. But honestly, I think we knew that something was very wrong when he showed up to practice and started giving us gifts — you know, personal possessions and things like that.” One of those possessions was his drum kit, which he insisted should remain with the band if anything should happen to him. Without putting it into exact terms, Marcy also made it clear that the band must con- tinue without him, and that a certain drum- mer was his fi rst choice to succeed him. As Atkinson remembers: “A year before Nate passed, he did call out Ryan’s name to us. We sat down at a pizza joint, Brandon and I with Nate. He was never really like, ‘Hey, I’m dying. We need to fi gure this out.’ It was more like, ‘I can’t do this much longer, and I don’t want you guys to stop. Here’s the best way, I think, that we can kind of move forward. Even if I won’t be here, I want a say in this.’ When he brought up Ryan’s name, Nate just said, ‘That guy is quite lovely at what he does.’” Indeed, Marcy had been a fan of Sims’s drumming before their bands met and started sharing stages in 2017. Palehorse/ Palerider and Green Druid recorded their upcoming debuts just days apart at the same studio, Module Overload in Aurora. The studio’s owner and engineer, Jamie Hillyer, played Green Druid’s demo-in-progress to Palehorse/Palerider while mixing one day, and Marcy in- stantly fell in love. “O bv i o u s l y, ” Richier says, “we had no inkling back then that Ryan would someday wind up being our drummer. But Nate was listen- ing, for sure.” Under the length- ening shadow of Marcy’s illness, the trio forged ahead. It released the Fire Gone Out/Haxan EP in 2019, which included a crushing cover of the Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Par- ties.” It was followed in 2020 by Legends of the Desert: Volume 1, a split LP with Austin outfi t Lord Buffalo. Even more ambitious and atmospheric than Burial Songs, the record was another big step forward in songcraft and visibility for Palehorse/Palerider. “All this stuff was happening, but we were having fewer and fewer band practices as Nate got sicker,” Atkinson says. “Plus, COVID was happening at the time, so it made it that much harder. Honestly, we would sometimes book a practice just so we could see him. We saw how he was losing weight every week, and it was just heartbreaking. It was Stage IV cancer.” Marcy’s death at the age of 43 wasn’t just a devastating blow for Palehorse/Palerider; it was a wound felt by Denver’s music scene at large. Since the late ’90s, the tireless multi- instrumentalist had been in numerous bands of almost every genre, among them power- pop combo the Risk, indie-rock group Spoke- Shaver, Five Iron Frenzy side project Yellow Second, and various ensembles with his wife, local singer-songwriter (and former Westword contributor) Rachael Pollard. The last song Palehorse/Palerider com- pleted before Marcy’s death is still untitled — not out of grief, but because it was supposed to have been named by a guest singer: Mark Lanegan, frontman of the legendary Seattle grunge band Screaming Trees, a onetime member of Queens of the Stone Age and half of the Glitter Twins with the Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli, as well as an acclaimed solo artist in his own right. “In 2020, when Nate was still here, we got approached by Magnetic Eye Records,” says Richier, referring to the New York label that has released music by such heavyweights as the Sword, Red Fang and Zakk Wylde. “The label’s whole concept was that they wanted to do a compilation of original songs by eight or nine bands that kind of hark back to Mark’s earlier music, his heavier music, and then having Mark sing on them and record his vocals in Ireland, where he was living.” Richier continues: “Magnetic Eye was sending songs to Mark to choose from, so we sent them a nine-minute-long demo we had been working on, not with any anticipation that he would be interested in us. And, of course, it was actually one of the fi rst things he latched on to. The MUSIC continued on page 18 Ryan Sims (left), Brandon Richier and David Atkinson of Palehorse/Palerider. CHRISTIAN HUNDLEY The late Nathan Marcy (center) was the original drummer of Palehorse/Palerider. LK CISCO
