The first thing you should know about the self-titled debut from thrashcore/noise unit Dead Cross is that Mike Patton is on it. Mike ‘audio Marmite’ Patton – the one from Faith No More and other less well known outings. And he’s not just on it in the sense that he’s one of the band members – Mike Patton is on this record like gum on the underside of a senior school table. Like Pret A Manger is on a London street. There’s approximately 26 individual Mike Pattons on this record.
There’s also a whole host of talented performances from Dave ‘used to be in Slayer’ Lombardo, guitarist Mike Crain (Retox) and bassist Justin Pearson (Retox plus others). The quartet churn out blistering, dizzying hardcore spliced with noisy experimentation and a snarling metal sensibility. ‘Seizure And Desist’ beeps and whines like a stricken modem before Lombardo drop-kicks his entire kit down a flight of stairs, and the listener along with it. There’s a foam-mouthed intensity at play throughout the record, powered by restless toms, scuzzy bass and buzzsaw guitars that blaze with a math-metal fury.
‘Idiopathic’ is breathless, scraping guitars and galloping kick drums seeking to outdo each other in terms of speed. There’s sneering punk grooves aplenty, and a scoliotic bass backbone that’s nigh on irresistible, with Patton switching between cutthroat screeches and soaring cleans with enviable ease. ‘Obedience School’ evokes its title with initial tentative restraint, before bursting into machine gun drumming and frantic riffing, lyrics covering missing pets and cheesy hand claps keeping things delightfully tongue in cheek. ‘Shillelagh’ cascades in with skittering drums and wailing guitar flare ups, an almost skate-punk drive worming its way in infectiously before the track seems to wear itself out.
‘Bella Lugosi’s Dead’ is a total curveball, a mean, fuzzed out bass swagger slowly rising as if from a coffin into brooding, glowering guitars and Patton’s incessant, distant howling. ‘Divine Filth’ truly explodes, relentless snare and rhythmically locked-in vocals acting as punctuation to the jarring, atonal guitars. ‘Grave Slave’ sees Patton squealing against the immediacy, bringing to bear some juvenile lyricism that will delight some and alienate others (“blow out the candles on the urinal cake/you’ve got a moustache made of shit”)
‘The Future Has Been Cancelled’ flexes its brawny, muscular riffs, guitars needling as Patton pants and grunts his way through like a dog trying to dislodge a swallowed wasp. ‘Gag Reflex’ is another disarming change of pace, dropping into grinding organ tones and gentle ‘ooooh’s. It grinds through slow chords, Lombardo barely keeping his drums on the leash, Patton crooning with all of his sensual smokiness. It punches up with call/response stuttering hardcore, blooming out into spacious guitars and a slower, more considered loop. If any tracks here could see more mainstream radio play, it’s this one.
‘Church Of The Motherfuckers’ throbs with industrial noise, threateningly dense, morphing into tolling guitars and Lombardo’s clockwork drumming under more of Patton’s scalded yelps. Considering the pedigree of the musicians, it would have been a true shocks for this album to be dire. This is, without a doubt, the best performance Lombardo has put in in the last fifteen years, including his work with Slayer – displaying his true savage energy and inhuman endurance once more. Pearson and Crain (which sounds very much like a respectable law firm) throw down some killer tones and licks, which are sadly lost a little bit in a decidedly drum/vocal heavy mix. Said mix sees Patton as decidedly overbearing – in terms of volume and sheer presence. On some tracks his vocal split-personalities work, unsettling with their smooth cleans as much as their strident bellow. But other times, you almost want the venerable frontman to take five and shut up to allow the rest of Dead Cross to bring the noise.
All in all, a worthy debut. These tracks must go off like a neutron bomb in a live setting, although those of you who can’t stand Ol’ Mikey P should probably sit this one out.
JAY HAMPSHIRE