With riffs for a week and a ’70s-boobage EP cover that’s bound to get them in trouble on one or all social media networking sites, San Diego trio Ride the Sun are flying high the flag of genuine stoner rock. Hard not to dig into their debut Ride the Sun EP. I bought some mp3s from the Doommantia store (kinda thought I was buying a disc, but for $5, I’ll take what I can get), and while that puts it in the “not gonna review this” pile, I still wanted to give interested parties a chance to listen and check out a band who are clearly worth the time.

Fortunately, Ride the Sun has posted the whole EP on their Bandcamp site. In the spirit of spreading the word and blogaraderie, here’s Ride the Sun‘s Ride the Sun EP.

As a general rule, I try to avoid reviewing compilations, because either the review winds up being a list of the bands involved with nothing of substance said about any of them, or it’s promo-speak pushing an album by saying, “It’s good, you should buy it.” Finally approaching the Planetfuzz Records debut release, Cowbells and Cobwebs, which culls together a whopping 28 underground purveyors of heavy and fuzzed out rock over the course of two 14-track discs, the best I’m hoping for is a combination of both the above. Needless to say, I’ve been sitting on the review for a while, and for me to go track by track and analyze each song would (1) take too long and (2) make for a review of such length that no one would ever read it, being of no use to any of the parties involved – bands, label, reader or myself. To give away the conclusion early: It’s a quality collection with a bunch of previously unheard material that those who think they can hold their breath for nearly 160 minutes (each disc is 79-plus) of fuzz without drowning in it would do well to check out.

A few familiar names pop up on the first disc, appropriately labeled Cowbells. Bands like Orthodox Fuzz, Arrowhead, Ride the Sun, Honcho, Gate 9, Sungrazer and The Grand Astoria are situated next to newcomers Mangoo (who might win the award for best band moniker on the comp), Loimann, Sons of Giants, Propane Propane, Audio Dream Sister, Moab and Spelljammer, and the highlights are just about evenly split between bands I knew going into Cowbells and Cobwebs and bands I didn’t. Sungrazer’s jammy “Zero Zero” shows there’s ample reasoning behind their having been signed to Elektrohasch, and I didn’t think much of it for its opening, but Propane Propane’s “It’s Alright” wound up one of the high points of the collection for its drum sound alone. Norwegian rockers Honcho check in with a track called  “Earth” from their 2010 self-released Battle of Wits album and the song is positively gorgeous in that post-Soundgarden Euro-stoner kind of way, while just a few tracks earlier, Ride the Sun show why their name has been ringing out so far over the last year or so with the previously-unreleased “Ride.”

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How there wasn’t already a band called Ride the Sun before these San Diego stoner bruisers came along, I’ll never know, but I guess they hit on the right niche name-wise. Guitarist/vocalist Lydell A. seems to have a streak going in that regard, as he was in Countach and Red Desert while living in Minnesota. Given his proclivity toward all things sandy and expansive, I’m sure he’s more at home in San Diego, which may not be Indio, but is sure as shit a lot closer in both climate and proximity than Minneapolis.

You may have heard the name Ride the Sun in association with the Doom in June fest that happened earlier this year (I think it was sometime around April…). The band play a straightforward and heavy style of stoner rock. The desert’s definitely an influence — you can hear no shortage of Kyuss influence in Lydell‘s vocals — but musically they’re more in line with early Fireball Ministry. Big guitar, big bass, big drums. Their self-titled EP is available for previewing on MySpace in suitable preview quality, and though the digital hypercompression makes some of Dominic Caltagirone‘s drum sounds hard to take and Kip Page‘s bass just hard to find, songs like “Livin’ Wrong” and “Compadre” should still give some idea of what Ride the Sun is all about: the rock, by all accounts.

They recently took part in the praiseworthy Cowbells and Cobwebs compilation from Planetfuzz, and their Ride the Sun EP is available now on something called iTunes (never heard of it). As they’ve already played what’s arguably the biggest American stoner fest of the year, I don’t know when we’ll be hearing from Ride the Sun again, but from what I can tell of these five tracks, they’re definitely worth keeping on the radar for the days you’re feeling like something extra-beardly but still accessible.