D.R.I.
Dirty Rotten + Violent Pacification

In 1983, the hardcore world was shaken by an earthquake of unprecedented proportions. With their debut album, “Dirty Rotten”, the Californians D.R.I. literally left everyone in their dust in the extreme scene. Nothing had ever been heard that was so fast, powerful, violent, screamed, concise, hysterical, devastating: 22 tracks packed into just 15 minutes of music, 22 sonic hurricanes that at the time made the Circle Jerks seem like an innocuous and regressive garage-rock band and that even today, 23 years later, are capable of shocking. 1983, it is important to remember, was also the year of the birth of thrash metal, with the debuts of Metallica and Slayer. This new form of metal that took hold at that time in the Bay Area, but also in New York (see Anthrax), pays a clear tribute to the work of D.R.I., as does the British grindcore of a few years later (that of Napalm Death). In short, D.R.I. created the “definitive” form of hardcore, from the point of view of sonic extremism, ending up influencing even a genre that was until then antithetical to hardcore like metal. It must be said, to give credit where it is due, that D.R.I. were not the only ones to innovate the genre in that direction: the 82/83 biennium marked the fundamental debuts of the great Bad Brains, Suicidal Tendencies, and Agnostic Front, all bands through which the two worlds of hardcore and metal embraced for the first time. But “Dirty Rotten” positions itself as the album where the invention of this sort of hardcore-metal is configured as systematic, programmatic, guided by a lucidity and clarity of intent that makes it a manifesto, a milestone. In the following analysis, the six tracks from the E.P. “Violent Pacification” (1984) will also be considered, included in a recent reissue of “Dirty Rotten”.

D.R.I. were a significant band not only for their style but also for their content: their lyrics cover serious themes such as war, capitalism, Reaganomics, adolescents' relationships with family, school, and society in general. To convey the expression of these profound issues, we find tracks based on frenzied progressions, sometimes intricate constructions (despite most tracks not exceeding one minute in length), a powerful rhythm section capable of heart-pounding accelerations and lightning tempo changes, a guitar (Spike Cassidy) that is fierce, abrasive, yet also eclectic and dedicated to dissonances, derailments, free-form solos in the Gregg Ginn school (Black Flag will never be praised enough for their foresight!), and a voice (Kurt Brecht) that is screamed, convulsive, disheartened, yet exceedingly emotional and communicative. The first two tracks already say a lot about this. The opener “I don’t need society” is one of the album's peaks: drums, bass, guitar enter in order, then Brecht's cathartic scream, the tension explodes and we are projected into a supersonic speed tunnel. It’s a goosebump-inducing track. The subsequent “Commuter Man” boasts two tempo changes in its 40-second duration: it starts paced (like The Stooges), then fired up (like The Germs), finally uncatchable (like D.R.I.!). With “Running Around”, “Violent Pacification”, “The Explorer” and especially “Couch Slouch” (another masterpiece), D.R.I. achieve the perfect formalization of their style, between slowdowns and detonations, while the mad “No sense” and the absurd “Who am I” represent the more buffoonish side of this band, the one that would later influence the irreverent proposal of bands like S.O.D.

 Despite at first listen, these 28 tracks may give the idea of being “all the same”, their charm lies precisely in the fact that each of them has within it a trick, a technical expedient, an idea, a peculiarity that makes it precious and different from the others. And this is due to the surprising versatility of the musicians. It may thus happen that the drums become grotesquely limping (“Dennis’s Problem”, “Busted”), that the guitar launches into vertiginous Hendrixian attacks (the hysterical “Reaganomics”) or melancholy arpeggios (the opening of “Blockhead”) or dragging solos (the threatening interlude of “Sad to be”), that the voice naturally transitions from the declamatory register of “Balance of Terror” to the paroxysmal of “Yes Ma’am”, from the anxious tone of “Money Stinks” to the dejected one of “War Crimes”.

 What I want to highlight about this album is that, despite the excesses, chaos, and cacophony that sometimes characterize it, there is always the impression of something sincere, heartfelt, human, not at all artificial (as in some thrash) and not at all inhuman (as in some grind). Listening to “Dirty Rotten” you feel that sense of discomfort, frustration, anger, impotence of a generation of adolescents grappling with daily situations and existential dilemmas so burning that they feel the need to transfigure them musically in the most intense way possible. They succeeded.