Dust Bolt – Awake the Riot (Napalm Records)
Sunday, 1st June 2014
Snotty German thrash would be Dust Bolt, which is almost as odd of a proposition of flunky Finnish thrash, currently provided by Lost Society. Nevertheless, it’s this dichotomy in which these bands hope to work off of, that they’re the offbeat brand of thrash, so there should be some kind of interest, eh? In the case of Dust Bolt, their second album, Awake the Riot, doesn’t require a great deal of thought in which to digest. This sort of thrash comes down the pike virtually every other day. Dust Bolt barely doesn’t anything different than the rest.
Suitably swiping from both the Bay Area (for the mosh parts) and their home country (for the technicality), Dust Bolt don’t lack for a frenetic listen, they just happen to encompass basically every thrash stereotype going. This is evidenced in the beer can-smashing romp of “Agent Thrash,” or the skateboard tumble of both “Beneath the Earth,” and twin guitar-laden “Drowned in Blind Faith,” a song that starts promisingly, then devolves into the now standard crunch-a-triplet template that is all over retro thrash. Perhaps the only song with a real chance is “Monotonous Distant Scream,” which stretches past the seven-minute mark, and gradually pulls in mid-tempo traction, soft guitars, and spare melodies. What a concept.
A rather safe, and overdone type of album, Awake the Riot will endear Dust Bolt to the jean jacket/high-top crowd, but little else. We were getting this stuff en masse four or five years ago; hearing it today from a relatively new band does nothing to change the sort: Retro thrash simply has too many warts to be anything remotely presentable. It’s just borderline background music at this point. (And yeah, that’s a generous 7.)
