4 out of 5

Label: RobotRadio

Producer: Maurizio (? that’s all it says, recorded by Maurizio)

How is RobotRadio this free digital label?  I mean, they have pay-for pressed albums (for which I wish I had the money, but Turtles back issues are obvs more important ya’ll), but their whole catalogue is free on bandcamp… and everything I listen to is like this punk / grunge nigh-masterpiece, certainly as good as any Hydrahead stalwart.  Dead Elephant is a heavy slab of kick-in-the-pants, reminding me of the straight-forward aggression of Botch, but without the superstardom of a Dave Knudson or someone wompy-wompin’ on guitar.  Not that that’s a knock on Dead Elephant – there’s a nice looseness to the punk/metal here that gives it a very organic feel, like these dudes wandered into your garage and made instruments out of scrap then just started rockin’ without your say-so.  Along with this comes a bit of a loss of identity.  I don’t know if it’s just part of the label’s vibe, but I have trouble saying “I’m in to Dead Elephant” because of that same loose feeling, like this is just a side project of a side project, something to glimpse out of the corner of your eye, and giving it too much acknowledgment will make it dissipate.  The band encourages this sense of escape and freedom by the album’s structure – after furiously kicking our ass for a few tracks – and I mean kicking our asses – the main trick here is to just slow the song down, down, down, then speed it up, up and up, which sounds cheap but is used at just the right clip here to make for a nice ebb and flow of fury – after a few tracks of that, the band enters into the ambient realm with “Black Coffee Breakfast.”  It’s a good mid-album spacey thing, and for a lot of bands would help to strengthen the connection of the album.  The Botch comparison comes back here, reminding me of the last track warp-out on “We Are the Romans.”  But Dead Elephant lets it stick around…  Black Coffee ends in some rock before spacing out again for “Abyss Heart,” and again for “Clopixol.”  By the time they come back to the metal, it’s like they’ve purposefully pushed you far enough away to not pay attention – Clopixol is just one song too long for a mid-album break.

Still, as is often unfortunately the case, this kind of criticism is only necessary due to how excellent the rest of the album is.  And those mid-album jams are good, too, they just don’t blend well into the overall experience.

I don’t know how long DE will be around, or if they’re still around.  But a digital download of this is legal and free on the band’s bandcamp, so maybe if enough of us believe, the band will continue and focus for a second, great album.  (Aaand, hey, Amazon has a 2011 Dead Elephant album for sale.  Hm….)