Diesto- Isle of Marauder

www.exigentrecords.com/pressdiesto

Reviewed by Dave.

I just got through listening to the latest offering from Diesto- Isle of Marauder. It is a shambling, slightly drunken, bombastic collection of heavy weight cemetery dirges. Diesto has a unique sound that you really love or really hate. The overall feel of the album is incredibly gritty, overwhelming the listener with huge, crashing, slightly detuned open chords and monstrous swinging grooves.

This is definitely a northwest band laying out classic lo-fi sludge with definite nods to bands such as Tad, early Melvins and Karp. It's murky, relentless, unabashed, unpretentious power trash(again something you love or hate). The record reminds me of countless weekends spent in front of bonfires drinking Hamms, daydreaming about escape from the mind numbing boredom of rural Oregon.

Sonicly it's a pretty interesting album, the guitar players prefer a rather subdued scuzzy fuzz over the standard razor sharp distortion most metal guitarists opt for. A lot of the guitar sounds in my mind actually lean more towards a loose raw almost jangly sound along the lines of Mission of Burma, mutated by fuzz and brutally bent notes. The vocals are high pitched howls of fury that are, I think, pretty inimitable and lend a nice contrast the dark tones of the rest of the music. The heavier elements of this album's sound are laid out by the bass and the drums tie everything together solidly. The playing style is kinda rough and jarring which lends to the gritty, salt of the earth, blue collar intensity of this recording.

I also really like the way it sounds at points like the guitar players are trying to bend the life out of each note and then just hang there to create even more tension only to come back with big crashing metal chords. At high volumes stuff like that really gets the hair on the back of the neck standing up.

OK now it's time for the airing of grievances, this is a review not an advertisement. Although the guitarists use interesting chords they don't really do much with them. The riffs on this album seem very generic and there aren't any interesting musical progressions that really reach out and grab me as a listener. Maybe the bass player does some interesting stuff here and there but you can't really hear it because the guitars overwhelm everything else. The album sounds pretty big because of this, but I think it could sound even bigger if more room was made for the powerful accents of the drums and the burly rumbling bass. While the vocal delivery is unique it is rather monotone and seems kind of like a place holder due to the fact that the lyrics are pretty unintelligible. For me it just boils down a band with an interesting sounds that, in my humble opinion, could expand a bit in the song writing department, it gets rather boring and repetitive about half way through.

I really want to like this album, but as mentioned above I just feel there are a couple key elements missing. The murky guitar parts all kind of blend together after a while and bury everything else in the milleau. Regardless I will be interested in seeing what these guys come up with next.

Using Jimmy's time honored scale of 1 to 10 minutes in reference to the auto erotic pleasure produced by this album I'll give 6.7 minutes.