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Death From Above 1979

There's something really charming about the chemistry between two-piece bands: there's the intense married couple (Mates of State), the intense divorced couple (Quasi), the intense male pain throwdown (The Mountain Goats), and then there's just freakin' screamy, concrete-wall-of-sound intensity. That would be Death From Above 1979.

DFA 1979's arsenal consists entirely of thumpy, danceable heavy metal pop songs. It's said that a strong rhythm section makes a band -- what I never realized was that a strong rhythm section could be the entire band.

Simple and stripped down to the purest quintessence of emotion -- the beat -- DFA 1979's music packs one hell of a wallop. The noisy, melodic bass lines and spiky drums provide a hard exoskeleton for the alternately aggressively insecure and aggressively sexual lyrics curled inside each song.

And seeing DFA 1979 live? I thought I'd be all thrashy & dancing like a fool. Instead, I stood nearly stock-still, transfixed by the the unspoken language that passed between drummer/vocalist Sebastien Grainger and bassist Jesse Keeler as they burned through one blazing anthem after another. I'd never been physically shaken quite so hard by a live set, ever. You could literally feel the soundwaves in the air; it felt like being wrapped in a fuzzy blanket of noise. Yeah, intense doesn't even begin to cover it.

Death from Above 1979 - Romantic Rights
Death from Above 1979 - Turn it Out
Death from Above 1979 - Dead Womb
Death from Above 1979 - Too Much Love

The Death From Above 1979 official website. Order You're a Woman, I'm a Machine from Amazon.

Posted by Little Miss Rock'n'Roll at 02.17.05 at 1:58 AM

Comments

i was just listening to you're a woman i'm a machine on the way to work today and thinking about their live show, which you summed up really well. i was totally dazed and vibrating afterwards.

Posted by: karen at 02.17.05 at 10:05 AM

I have you to thank for introducing me to DFA 1979! I'm really glad we went to that show together, too!

Posted by: little miss rock'n'roll at 02.18.05 at 8:37 AM

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