DR has yet to frequent the musical hotbed that is Austin, TX. However, reliable sources and various media reports have indicated the city has turned into a hotbed for hipsters. Now, one’s definition of what a hipster is may vary, but if you’re thinking of a big, bushy beard, thick, black glasses, a flannel shirt, and an undying love for The Arcade Fire, then you’re on the same level as us. All this ponders the question how a veritable, meat-and-potatoes metal band such as Dead Earth Politics can co-exist with these sketchy characters. Is it possible? Do the hipster dorks snicker when they hear the “true” British-by-way-of-the-south metal sounds of the cuts that comprise the band’s of high-quality 3-song The Queen of Steel EP? Probably. And that’s why they’re not cool.
Anyway, and off the soapbox, the band plays a meld of thrash and death, shuttled through the modern metal filter, with occasional clean vocal action. None of this, though, teeters upon trendy territory; there’s obvious weight and flow via the band’s melodic choices (i.e. “Redneck Dragonslayer”), while the more muscular and brutish “Madness of the Wanderer” shows singer Ven’s ability to bounce between airy cleans and throaty, totally Americanized growls.
Without a real subgenre trap to fall into, Dead Earth Politics have the necessary amount of wiggle room to do as they please should they feel the need to record a full-length. For now, the three songs that comprise The Queen of Steel are engaging, heavy in the right spots, and melodic when it has to be. Austin’s best young metal band? Probably.