Best post-punk salvo

Although terms such as “grindcore,” “power violence,” and “metal” serve their purpose, as the strains of post-hardcore music are subjected to increasingly grotesque over-genrefication, they also place constraints on both the band and the audience’s expectations. Dead in the Dirt’s The Blind Hole (Southern Lord Records), could be filed under any one of these subheadings. The record’s power lies in its ability to smash through those barriers. Culminating in a storm of 22 songs that whiz by in less than 25 minutes, tempos phase up and down as a pastiche of sonic textures, distortion, and weirdo samples add a fourth dimension to the music. Songs such as “Swelling,” “Strength Through Restraint,” and “Idiot Bliss” test the limits of traditional hardcore by lumbering along at a grinding pace without losing an ounce of their crushing weight. “Cop” and “No Chain” blend lightning-fast energy with brutal low-end grind that deliver heady blasts of existential angst. All of Dead in the Dirt’s music strives to reach into deeper, darker levels of the human condition, transcending whatever it was you thought grindcore, hardcore, and metal were all about. www.deadinthedirt.bandcamp.com. less...