DISARRAY

It's never a bad time to shine some light on the seamy, no-hope underbelly of American metal. I'm not talking about the 900 bands plying whatever the flavor of the month is, swimming upstream like doomed sperm hoping for their big chance. I mean the bands like DISARRAY, who've been at it since 1993, eating shit on the road, sinking their day job money into their band, cranking out grit-knuckled workingman's heavy metal for the beer drinkers, backyard mechanics and aging bruisers who don't like their metal bands with keyboards, eyeliner, puffy shirts or ironic anything. More populist and proletariat than anything currently being marketed as "punk", this is battering-ram metal for the common man.

Slot DISARRAY next to PRO-PAIN (whose Gary Meskil produces and chimes in with a guest vocal),BRICK BATH, DEFLAGRATION (hell, throw OVERKILL in there while yer at it),and a hundred other hardscrabble bands who never forgot metal could have verses and choruses, and that it's supposed to be about a fistful of riffs and a middle finger to life outside the stage lights and the beer buzz. "Edge of My Demise" rocks out simple, hard and catchy, with mainman Chuck Bonnett's agonized, quasi-melodic snarl biting off chunks of lyrics and spitting them mic-ward over basic, headbangable, stick-to-your-ribs bar metal. Songs like the withering statement of intent "It's About Time" are built on a riff that Angus and Malcolm would find no fault with, while "Punishment For Being Born" kicks in a little hard rock swagger. "Edge of My Demise" and "Severed Ties" turn up the tempo a notch to put their sound closer to hardcore turf (the latter, with Bonnett and Meskil trading off verses, could well be a PRO-PAIN tune).

In short, this is meat-and-potatoes metal with no pretentious aspirations toward doing anything but kicking your ass, then having a shot and a beer with you before trundling down the road in a clapped-out Club Wagon in search of the next dive, the next crackly PA, the next shifty club owner. DISARRAY isn't the kind of band that shows up on a lot of critics' Top Ten lists, and it may be a cold day in hell before what's left of the industry will give 'em a fair shake – but those of us who dwell in those bars, and like our metal simple, with dirt under the nails and fire in the heart, appreciate the hell out of guys like this who pretty much ruin their lives in the service of rock and roll.

Pissed off, southern-steeped groove metal well worth your time to seek out.