DRI - Full Speed Ahead

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A few weeks ago, I got a "Welcome to eBay!" email, for an account I did not create.  Well, that's weird, but I wasn't too alarmed since I regularly change my email/banking passwords and did not expect any fraudulent activity of that nature.  Since contacting ebay is such a pain in the ass, I just let it be and kept an eye out for any emails about transactions.  Today ebay since me an order confirmation for the product pictured above.  It turns out there is a dude with my name who lives in the United Kingdom who must've typed his email address incorrectly or something, and I'm getting his ebay emails.  I called ebay to have them fix this because I do not want to be implicated in any way if this guy turns out to be some kind of scam artist or just a shitty ebayer and I have to incur the wrath of an angry seller.  Until then I will continue to enjoy reviewing his future purchases.

In the meantime, I want to talk about the DRI's final album, 1995's Full Speed Ahead.  There are people who criticize later DRI.  In many fans' eyes they became too metal, too polished and slick, and punks everywhere cursed the band for allegedly abandoning their hardcore roots.  I think some of those criticisms are warranted to a degree, but it would be foolish to completely dismiss everything after "Dealing With It."  For Christ's sake, their crossover masterpiece was called CROSSOVER.  And no matter how metal or "slick" they got, the vocals retained their hardcore punk approach, no heavy metal falsettos or ballads to be found.  You can download the record from mediafire here and I will include the download link again at the end of the post.

I was going to say this cover art sucks, then I noticed the DRI guy on the ship.  Still....

In 2013, we don't think twice about how long bands like Bane or Converge  have been around (hell, even Terror is over 10 years old now).  I think since most of the early punk and hardcore bands had shorter life spans, it's easy to look at a band like DRI and laugh at the idea that they put out an album in 1995.  But it is a fitting swan song for the band, combining the speed of their early records and the metallic riffing of their crossover/thrash records and adding new found heaviness.  Full Speed Ahead is very much a product of its time: there is a lot of Pantera-esque groove on this record, and guitars are way down-tuned, making the slow parts heavier, the fast parts meaner, and everything in between just nasty.  Listen to this and try not to bang head:

Another drive-by, everyone stares

What it comes down to is nobody cares

The opening riff would not sound out of place on a Crowbar or Pantera record.  The tempo picks up with a gnarly riff before settling back into the opening riff; the tempo & riff alternates like this for the verses, in between a chuggy, double-bass filled chorus.  Check out that great drumfill and awesome dueling guitar slides around 1:03.  That brings up one of this album's major strong points: the production.  While the guitar has sounded thin at times on previous records, it is thick and beefy here, but not overproduced.  The bass is clear and present, working nicely alongside the guitar and underpinned by tight, powerful drumming.  The drums are the production highlight, reminding me very much of the drums on Carnivore's "Retaliation": very high in the mix, lots of emphasis on the kick, drums that don't just become a blur when the band plays fast.  Listen to the final minute of "Syringes in the Sandbox" to hear some great solo drum fills to get an idea of how good these drums sound, and enjoy a most devastating buildup to a truly mind-numbing outro.

"Syringes in the Sandbox" is an example of how brutal and heavy this album can get, but there are quite a few songs with tempos more akin to DRI's early thrash (thrash as it originally meant in hardcore punk, not thrash metal).  The opening track is one such song:

Been on my best behavior/You are not my savior/You are just another vice
Was I this week's flavor?/Just do me a favor/And stay the fuck out of my life

This song sounds like it's about a crazy girl that he finally kicked to the curb.  Good for him!  I wonder if this girl inspired this next song, one of my favorites on the record.

I don't trust that girl with a gun/There's something about a girl with a gun
The way they fly off the handle/Someone's gonna get hurt

I've been very fortunate that guns never entered the hands of some girls I've dated, or else the blog you're reading would have been written by a ghost, and that would be very spooky.  Anyway, this song starts off with a great intro driven by a killer bassline, building nicely before blasting into a riff that if it had a face, it would belong on Mt. Rushmore.  This song gets 6 out of 6 .357 magnum rounds.

Some more disgusting riffage:
The sum of all you are is all in your mind From slow to fast to midtempo, complete with mid-riff harmonics (although not at a Fury of Five level,stay tuned for the Fury of Five Harmonics/Falsetto Scream Megamix).   DRI does something on this record that typically comes out like garbage for most bands: they re-recorded one of their early, classic songs.  DRI manages to avoid the song becoming a paradoxical plea for both relevance and reverence, simply because it sounds so damn good.  There is an authenticity to the re-recording, no trace of self-consciousness that tends to plague re-recordings.  For the hell of it, here are the two versions of the song in question, "Who Am I?" Dirty Rotten LP (1984) Full Speed Ahead (1995) Well, I think I've given a pretty decent overview of the record.  I could post more songs, but I will simply post one more video, which is the full album, so you can listen to more, skip around, and if you decide you like it, download it here.  I am one of those people who tends to like bands' questionable later albums, so feel free to leave a comment and share your opinion of this record or anything you've seen in this post.  As I'm wrapping up this post, I get an email from Levi's customer service (I'd emailed them earlier in the day about an order).  The guy's name is Dan Tanner, so I signed my thank you email "Uncle Jesse," and now Full House has been referenced on my blog.  Time to wrap it up.  Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the tunes and maybe you can add another record to your playlist.  Take it easy.