REVIEW: DRY WEDDING – THE BACK OF BEYOND
A Metallic Goth Western that reaches deep…
I’ve been looking forward to a new album from Dry Wedding for a while. The Portland quartet’s heavy Western post-punk resulted in two promising records with The Long Erode and Sway. 5 years have passed since the latter, but I still felt Dry Wedding had an album capable of tighter songwriting to further refine their idiosyncrasies. The Back of Beyond is that album and more. A renewed interest in post-punk has given us countless vampire-obsessed nostalgia bands, but Dry Wedding offer a rare, refreshing and creative take on the genre.
Simultaneously, The Back of Beyond never feels like it’s trying too hard to be different. The band make effective use of dissonance, marrying noise with goth rock and blues like The Birthday Party and Bauhaus. Mercifully however, they don’t delve into cringe postmodern indulgences many “innovative” bands are praised for. They give us a different form of heavy rock while still making music I would actively want to listen to.
The album starts with a scorcher in “Arrowhead.” It’s a song that builds on itself beautifully. Subtle post-punk guitars develop into a heavy Tribulation-sounding chorus. The track then climaxes with irresistibly evil guitar melodies. The Back of Beyond isn’t really a heavy metal album, but its touches of metal bring the songs to powerful heights. It’s informed by a knowledge of metal that feels genuine, not cynical. The shattering vocal performance at the track’s crescendo underscores a sense of being tormented by its reflective lyrics: “I need to reckon with the way I’ve made others feel.” Like much of the best heavy music, aggression is used to express empathy.
The second track, “The Serpent Box,” is an up-tempo, anti-religious rocker. Its twangy dissonance and bluesy baritone vocals make it the most representative of the band’s influence from The Birthday Party. Singer Davey Ferchow’s inflection obviously owes a debt to Nick Cave. I might get stones thrown at me for saying this, but I’ve honestly never been a big Birthday Party fan. Dry Wedding give me what I like about them and discard what I don’t. It’s really cool to hear a band take influence from a group not as exhaustingly referenced as The Cure or The Sisters of Mercy.
On “Sure As A Gun,” the mid-tempo pace and graceful use of space give room for poetic storytelling to breathe. It’s a fine centerpiece that reminds me of Echo & the Bunnymen’s classic, “Thorn of Crowns.” It also gives a further window into the album’s lyrical reflections: “taking aim at anyone threatening my way… I speak through my barrel… I start to feel the heft of my revolver.”
Whereas The Birthday Party relished in unrequited masculine voyeurisms, or as Mark Fisher put it in For Your Unpleasure: The Hauteur-Couture of Goth, “Cave oscillates between worshipping his Lady’s femmachinc hauteur… and pruriently drooling over the ‘filth’ of her flesh,” Ferchow’s love of Cave’s abject is balanced. There’s an understanding that his embodiment of masculinity should be viewed critically. A reference to a gun would have surely taken the form of phallic symbolism in Cave, but here, it’s a metaphor for the violence of ego. The Back of Beyond’s lyrics express remorse at causing others pain and a genuine desire to be a better person.
On “Moths,” the band display their skillful command of dynamics. Variety and flow are hallmarks of great songwriting I often find missing from hyperspecific niche sameness. The band play off each other and let the composition unfold naturally. It culminates in a super cool psychedelic bridge riff, like something you’d hear off the first two Black Sabbath albums. Throughout the course of the record, there is memorable lead playing. Bouncy guitar lines are equally astringent as they are beautiful. The interplay of the two guitars gives a fully fleshed backdrop for the baritone vocals to rest upon.
Album closer “Shifting Wilderness” is a cavernous and cinematic track. Its finessed musicality and imagistic lyrics are indicative of the record’s strengths. Creepy echo guitars are paired with Evil Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre aesthetics. It picks up halfway through, finds a groove, then leaves the listener on the perfect cresting wave of atmosphere. Drummer Tom Fuller deserves props for tightly setting up the changes in this song and coming up with creative parts across the album.
A beautifully painted cover captures the reflective American isolation Dry Wedding express on The Back of Beyond. They’ve made a heavy post-punk Western that is a perfect counterpart to the Morriconian black metal of their Vesperian labelmates in Wayfarer. The band’s diverse influences coherently synthesize on an album entirely unique to them. Equally atmospheric, personal, hard-rocking and exploratory, their metallic gothic blues is distinguished and unforgettable.
4/5 Flaming Toilets ov Hell
The Back of Beyond is out now via Vesperian.
