Graveyard Rodeo

Graveyard Rodeo stood among the first acts to shape the NOLA strain of sludgecore that fused hardcore with metal and doom. The group cut two modestly received and largely overlooked albums for Century Media in the early 1990s. Its sole durable connection to wider music history rests on the early participation of Pepper Keenan, later guitarist and singer for Corrosion of Conformity, although he had already left before the band’s 1993 debut, Sowing Discord in the Haunts of Man. That record is frequently characterized as a midtempo take on the approach Crowbar brought to prominence and was tracked by bassist Tommy Scanlan, guitarists Gary Gennaro and Brad Christiana, vocalist Perry McAuley, and drummer Wayne Fabre. For the follow-up, On the Verge, issued the next year, McAuley, Fabre, and Christiana were succeeded by Jay Gracianette, Gary Hebert, and Mark Brignac in those respective roles, marking the band’s final release. Years afterward Fabre joined the reactivated death-gore unit Necrophagia, while the remaining Graveyard Rodeo members have remained absent from the scene.