Dry Spell – Dry Spell (Vinyl Conflict Records)
One of the most reviled acts a punk band can indulge in is a drastic alteration of style, especially the all-too-common phenomenon of toning things down, of “going rock.” Maybe the drummer’s sick of playing fast all the time. Maybe the guitarist learned a few scales and wants to throw in some solos. Maybe the singer starts dropping in some melody – a little at first, enough to get the crowd singing along – but gradually enough that it whittles away the sound’s rougher edges. It’s a process that’s overtaken great bands (Void, Die Kreuzen, SSD, Discharge, DRI, etc.) and not-so-great bands (Gang Green, DYS), but the results are resoundingly uniform – the grab for wider acceptance fails fucking miserably and the band is left to either crawl simperingly back to the material that defined them early on or be shamed into a breakup.
Dry Spell – Dry Spell (Vinyl Conflict Records)
One of the most reviled acts a punk band can indulge in is a drastic alteration of style, especially the all-too-common phenomenon of toning things down, of “going rock.” Maybe the drummer’s sick of playing fast all the time. Maybe the guitarist learned a few scales and wants to throw in some solos. Maybe the singer starts dropping in some melody – a little at first, enough to get the crowd singing along – but gradually enough that it whittles away the sound’s rougher edges. It’s a process that’s overtaken great bands (Void, Die Kreuzen, SSD, Discharge, DRI, etc.) and not-so-great bands (Gang Green, DYS), but the results are resoundingly uniform – the grab for wider acceptance fails fucking miserably and the band is left to either crawl simperingly back to the material that defined them early on or be shamed into a breakup.
This whole process of trading one genre for another might not really have anything to do with Dry Spell or their newest release – they haven’t been around long or traded one style for another. But the band places their music so squarely in the middle of the hardcore-gone-rock divide that it almost seems like some largely hypothetical fantasy world where such bands could let their style evolve without it turning into a pile of shit. Make no mistake, this is a killer hardcore album, but it’s one that doesn’t really resort to breakneck pacing or pandering breakdowns; that prefers a hoarse melodic vocal style (not unlike John Reis) over monotone shouting; that has guitar solos all over the fucking place. It’s an approach that renders their sound eminently accessible, and not in the standard punk sense of the term that equates “accessible” with “watered-down bullshit.”
Which, of course, isn’t to say this hasn’t been done before. But the bands that have been able to pull off progression without a sacrifice of the elements that made their earliest music compelling are few and far between – think Poison Idea circa Feel The Darkness, Corrosion of Conformity up to about ’86, or the earlier Raw Power albums – and while Dry Spell may not necessarily be standing on the shoulders of such giants yet, their newest release demonstrates their ability to push outwards from the periphery of a genre and an unwillingness to grasp at its lowest common denominators. It’s as alienated and hostile as the best hardcore and as maddeningly catchy as the best rock and roll – two elements that are rarely as well-combined as when Dry Spell tackles them.
