Dead In The Dirt     

The Blind Hole

Southern Lord 2013

Atlanta's masters of intense grinding death finally have put down enough tracks for a full-length album.  Each song is a succinct explosion of crusty violence.  Each track is a quick, lightning strike of deadly brutality.  However some songs hit harder than others and therefore I view this album as a bit of a mixed bag.  The album opens with Suffer which is full of thick, crusty riffs and sharp squeals that puncture your mind.  Then we leap immediately into The Blaring Eye with its insane eruptions of speed and harsh brutality.  Up next is Swelling which is rapid sonic assault that quickly drops into a sludgy slog.  Strength Through Restraint squeals and pierces your psyche with sonic noise that does more to annoy than to motivate.  After the audio irritation of the previous track, Idiot Bliss is a lightning fast eruption of blasting drums and riffs that speaks to any grind preferences in my soul.  Finally a great track, You Bury Me, fulfills the promise of memorable riffs that span both sonic destruction and massive, pounding chords.  Skullbinding is 20 seconds of Warp-speed grind followed by the more controlled attack of Cop with its huge, slinking riffs and rapid-fire detonations of drums that remind me a bit of Old Lady Drivers.  Will Is The War creeps along at a crusty, Axegrinder-esque pace before kicking into a deadlier salvo of drums and riffs.  The chugging riffs and anti-harmonic sqeals are starting to wear thin though.  Baggar is a forgettable blur of insane speed and mish-mash riffage.  But then so is One More Day which follows.  Dead In The Dirt's debut album is an inconsistent album that batters and stabs the listener with intense eruptions of destructive barbarity, accented by periods of noisy squeals and thick drudgery.  For me, Southern Lord has finally missed the mark as I am underwhelmed by Dead In The Dirt's first full-length, which by the way is only 23 minutes long.