There’s been a monumental amount of good music in the first quarter of 2026. A lot of it has garnered a variety of responses from me; sometimes a stank-face, or a thoughtful pondering expression, or simply staring into the middle distance in sheer dissociative depression. Not much, however, has made me smile from beginning to end. Fortunately for me, the Santa Cruz horrorpunk outlet Dark Ride is here to remedy that with their excellent debut, Blade Manor.
Dark Ride is the brainchild of genre veteran Emilio Menze, known for his work in Stellar Corpses. You can tell when a frontman is either disinterested in his own project or just kind of it in for the bag, but Menze’s passion for Dark Ride could not be further from this mindset. It is crystal clear in every single second of Blade Manor that Menze and his crew are having a blast. That sort of energy is infectious even through vinyl pressings and CDs and shitty quality streams on Spotify.
The overwhelming influences here are Misfits and AFI. Easy sell for me personally, but any fan of punk and rock ‘n’ roll in general should give this record a shot. I’m sure Menze tires of hearing his voice compared to Davey Havok’s for its mournful tone, but I hope he understands the comparison is a flattering one. Menze carries this album through both lead and backing vocals, creating anthems tailor-made for singing along in the car with the windows down. Catchy does not even begin to cover it. The lyrics are absolutely soaked in retro horror tropes and heightened dark romance, as to be expected from the genre, but I particularly enjoyed how Dark Ride straddles the line between angst-ridden and playful. Unending love appears as a repeated theme, but then “Rewind” contains the line “blood, beers, and lots of babes.” That’s the good stuff. Get you a man who can sing both or whatever.
This record is consistently great throughout, but there are a few standout tracks. “Coffin,” which was co-written and produced by sonic warlock Randy Moore, possesses an ungodly fun central guitar hook, which Moore also played for the album. “Rewind” commits fully to VHS nostalgia, complete with some cheeky sound effects. Album closer “Psycho Summer” features guest vocals from Jess-O-Lantern, which brings a nice textural variety courtesy of her operatic tone. And “I Bury Boyfriends” leans heavily on the Danzigesque comic book violence with its memorable chorus and ‘60s drums. There’s no filler on this bad boy.
I sent Blade Manor to my friend Will because we have similar taste, and he made this review quite easy for me by providing the following reaction: “This album is implanting in me memories of a 2006 I did not actually live.” God dammit, that is exactly it. I can picture myself drinking a wine cooler in the back of someone’s car parked in a literal quarry (upstate New York is weird, OK?) while this was in the CD player. Blade Manor could have been the soundtrack to my high school graduation party via some sort of temporal space-time fuckery, which, for the record, was a kegger that was bankrolled by my dad. Give it up for Mike Nerney.
Anyway—you get my point. While this album might tap into a pleasant musical past life, I don’t want to make it seem like its success is due entirely to nostalgia. Blade Manor is stellar on its own. It’s fun, gothic, catchy as all fuck, and 100% going to be in my top albums this year despite a very packed release schedule and a lot of competition. Put on a Frankenstein t-shirt and go blast this on a boombox while smoking an illicit after-school cigarette in your garage.
