Everytime I Die- The Big Dirty

Ferret Records

January 30, 2008, 05:05 PM

The Big Dirty (Everytime I Die)- Review

Last week, I got the opportunity to listen to an album called 'The Big Dirty' by a supposedly underground metal band called EVERYTIME I DIE. I found that they had some really interesting titles with edgy word-play. How about titles such as “We’re Wolf”, “INRIhab” and “Rendez-Voodoo”? Then I just read their highly passionate introductory biographical section which was included at the back. Here are some excerpts from it:

“To this day, historians have not reached a unanimous consensus regarding the birth date of one of underground rock music’s most important finds”

“Single most valuable contribution to the unifying musical creationism and music evolution ever”

There were many of such forceful statements printed on the back cover. I felt something fishy about all those grandiose remarks and was really in doubt about their worth when I read it. As I was listening to it in a few moments and even after a few tracks, my doubts were perfectly intact about the credibility of the band. I almost came to the conclusion that this album had indeed nothing interesting to offer. However, I was hoping for at least one surprise or something that would debunk my premature conclusion midway while listening but till the last song, it really did not change my original thoughts. This album is so appallingly horrible- and I mean it in the true sense of the words (these days even the word ‘sick’ is considered good)- that at one point, I could not even make out the difference between a certain track and a couple of others. In fact, all of them right from ‘No Son of Mine’ to ‘Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Battery’ sound almost the same with the exception of ‘Buffalo Gals’; though it does not mean that track is anything special. All the tracks begin with a blast of distorted guitars and pounding drums. There is nothing innovative taking place, musically. Besides, the same vocal treatment for all the songs is not really a good idea though there are hardly any rules for this. On the whole, this album does not live up to the churning words thrown unashamedly in the biographical section.

There are loud guitars and drums pound throughout all right befitting their subject matter. The bass sound gets somewhat submerged in the guitar sound, on some occasions. The overall sound, however, is not mixed properly. The subject matter is the usual tried and tested “dark” topics on bigotry, losing faith, Devil and God, etc. How many bands have ventured into these areas in the past three decades and how many of them have made this kind of music! Give us a break from these “Slayers”! I do not understand what on earth does the introductory press biographer mean by their music being “unorthodox mix of blistering metal, progressive hardcore and melodic sensibility”? That statement is more applicable to bands such as Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Metallica because they had a certain art of doing it. They knew when to play the parts and not just introduce thick block of sound from start till end. Their music had simplicity and complexity all rolled into one. Marillion, Dream Theatre and Pink Floyd were or are masters of progressive rock music. Often, all those aforementioned bands used to play in different time signatures in one song but rarely ever played discordant music. Even heavy punk bands such as Sex Pistols, Clash and The Stranglers were unique class acts even with all the noise and music they made since their ideas were also fresh at the time. With Big Dirty, their basic music and ideas are in itself either so uninspiringly flawed in the first place or have already been explored by so many other bands in the past that there is no point at all of using labels such as “progressive hardcore” and “ musical creationism” and “musical evolution ”. I am wondering whom to truly loathe now- whether the person who wrote a completely pretentious biography stacking inappropriately intense words as if “this is the greatest thing in music to have ever happened” or the musicians themselves for making such an awful record? I would challenge these very musicians who made this music to listen to it five years down the line. I can bet that they would not enjoy this in any way.

This album is totally unrecommended if you looking for adventure or something that you could relate to. Finally, a thought for the day from the band’s biographer-

“The Big Dirty has fossilized itself the moist, squashy pulp of our untrained minds at a time when man is completely incapable of registering its cultural significance”.

That in itself indirectly exposes the folly of his/her view. The cultural significance comes when someone does something new, exciting, with refreshing ideas and sounds- not with an album like this one. Coincidentally, in the last song ‘Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Battery’, the song ends on a perfectly apt note as the lead vocalist sings- “It is better to destroy than to create what is meaningless”. Now, need I say more?