As most of you know, it’s all been done. Most of “it”, whatever “it” is musically was done about 15 years ago. It was definitely done by 1990. I’ll tell you what. If you’re in a band and you are naive enough to think you have something fresh and new and totally original to offer the music world, please don’t send it here. Why would you want the opinions of a silly, cartoony web-based rag that gets less attention than the drinking fountain in the bottom floor of an office building? Rather, send it to one of those other zines, crafted by IT helpdesk nerds on company time. They don’t have anyone on staff that witnessed or was even alive on the planet during the outbreaks of punk, the NWOBHM, grindcore, the release of “Slippery When Wet” or even the NC-17 movie rating, but they’ve got a cool PHP script, most of the Equal Vision or Relapse catalog, and everybody’s throwing the horns all the time. It’s my responsibility as a music critic to inform you that you will receive earth-shattering reviews from the above-mentioned sources for your eureka.

If the instructions in paragraph 1 are clear, then let me proceed to advise that DIRTY POWER is the most genuine and powerful band in music today. They’re the result of a Cuisinart full of slow-cooked influences, but they never foul up the air with the notion that the wheel is being reinvented by their tunes. They just go out and do it. Buy this CD. But instead of sending DP $5 or whatever they’re asking, send $10 or $15 as a thanks for not bullshitting us. Put the EP on, and enjoy the images that immediately spring up like a hot spring. Images of Gibson Explorers and V’s and hair flying and sweat and chunks of broken drumstick splintering into flesh and union jack shorts and red Smirnoff t-shirts and flash pots and toasting with plastic cups and getting shoved into the next row by some angry 90# chick in front of you, and Milton Berle and getting burned on the arm by some guy next to you waving a butt around, and the smell of old smoke and piss. Strings rumble, guitars howl, cymbals swish. Patrock tries a little too hard to sound like Ian Gillian in spots. I’m done.

- Marchman

OFFICIAL SITE: www.dirtypower.net

MP3 SOUND SCRAP: What Would Mountain Do

RELATED ITEMS: Picks of the litter, 2003