I Tread on Your Grave

The Death Wheelers are an instrumental four-piece from Canada who make doomy biker rock with track titles like “Roadkill 69,” “Sleazy Rider Returns,” “Motö Vampiro,” etc., and occasionally drop in samples of dialogue from late-Sixties/early-Seventies horror and exploitation movies, or Divine screaming “Kill everyone now” from Pink Flamingos. The joke is a good one, but what keeps the whole thing actually worth one’s attention for more than fifteen minutes is that the music rocks. Bandleader Max “The Axe” Tremblay writes and produces their jams, and he’s got a real skill at carving out a riff, as well as the sense of economy to recognize that instrumental rock has to get in and out fast — these are three-minute blasts of energy that waste no time in getting to the point.