Dead-Idiots

Eolian Empire
2013

Dead, the Melbourne, Australia-based purveyors of noise rock, is a 2-piece band comprised of Jace on bass/vocals and Jem on drums/vocals. After listening to all that Dead has to offer here on their latest release, which was originally released at the tail end of 2012, I'm left drifting in the wasteland that is indecision. As "Idiots" opens with a slow build up, which I would have bet anything was going to be a case where a track  lulls you into a false sense of security, and doesn't really ever pick up until much later on. Produced by Dead themselves and recorded and mixed at Headgap Studios by Neil Thomason (except for the vocals which were recorded by Max Ducker at Cellar Sessions) this heavy slab of noise rock picks apart plenty treasured post-punk bands of old and then super-glues everything back together into it's own structurally unsafe work of art. I'm not going to lie here as I do like the description that came with this particular underground release. Describing this LP as (and I quote) "a Voltron-like beast formed from stripped-to-the-bone Karp and Melvins, ultra-heavy aberrations of Wire and Gang of Four angular punk, odd technical riffage of GodHeadSilo and No Means No, the aggro Aussie vibes of Feedtime, and creepshow experimentation" it's actually close to being spot on (description-wise) although images of The Swans flashed before my very eyes as I sat with my headphones on digesting this album. There's parts of this album that I thoroughly enjoyed (including the last 3 album tracks), but there's also parts I could have done without. Therefore I'm left in a quandary as I can't really recommend this release and yet I'm not ready to write Dead off yet. My best advise with this one (if you're into noise rock) would be to listen to it before you buy it. If you can take it for a test drive then by all means do it.