Metal Church – Dead To Rights
Metal Church – Dead To Rights
Rat Pak Records
Release Date: 10/04/26
Review by Jon Deaux
8.7/10
I will describe the scene properly, as it is worthy of description, as the importance of context cannot be overstated, and I am nothing if not the servant of context.
It is 11:47 PM on a Tuesday, which is already a moral failure, as Tuesdays are only good for reminding you that Monday wasn’t all bad, and that you probably imagined the whole thing. It is my third coffee and first existential crisis of the evening. My living room has the faint aroma of ambition gone sour, like milk left in the refrigerator for too long. It has a half-written novel on the desk that has not seen the light of day since 2019. And it has a bass guitar in the corner that seems to laugh at me daily.
And then ‘Dead To Rights’ scares the crap out of me as it blasts away from my hi-fi speakers.
My cat immediately leaves the room. She is a Maine Coon. She has the intellectual and moral standing of a medieval academic. She has the moral high ground of a hangman. She leaves the room because of the music. Not a criticism. A verdict.
Metal Church has put out their 13th album. Thirteen. A number that elevator manufacturers in corporate America avoid by choosing to save the therapy bills for the office workers, many of whom are going to be atheists and make fun of the very idea of the number itself. A number that makes gamblers nervous, sailors nervous, and statisticians nervous enough to make lawyers look like fools. A number that appears regardless of your wishes, regardless of your requests, regardless of your hopes that the doors are going to open and regardless of your hopes that whatever is on the other side of the doors is worth looking at.
These men, Kurdt Vanderhoof, Rick Van Zandt, David Ellefson, Ken Mary, and their new lead vocalist Brian Allen, saw the numerical representation of the number 13. They saw the number itself and made eye contact with it in a crowded room. They pointed. They pointed at it and said, “That one. We’ll take that one.”
That is all you need to know about Metal Church and their relationship with self-preservation. That is all you need to know about Metal Church and their relationship with self-preservation: it is not their problem.
Metal Church was formed in 1980 in Aberdeen, Washington. The same Aberdeen that spawned Kurt Cobain. I like to think that says something about the water supply in that area. They have been around for four decades, have had their share of member changes, taken a hiatus, gotten back together, seen the rise and fall of hair Metal, the rise and fall of Grunge, the entire musical career of approximately nine hundred bands that formed after them, before them, or both, two recessions, a pandemic, and whatever it is that we are calling the current state of geopolitics that I’m not at liberty to discuss before midnight.
They’re still around. They’re still loud. And they’re still here to tell you, over the course of ten tracks, forty-three minutes, and a production job that sounds like Zeuss at Planet Z Records mixed it through the front grille of a moving tank, that they still have opinions.
‘Brainwash Game’ — The opening track of the album has all the subtlety of a structural fire in a munitions depot. Which is to say: none at all. Zero. Round, perfect, and beautiful absence of subtlety. And that, I say, is an architectural compliment rather than an adverse criticism.
‘F.A.F.O.’ — Three minutes and forty-seven seconds of a band encapsulating forty years of grievance in an acronym that acts as life advice, personal credo, and explanation for every bad news story you’ve read over the last ten years. The chorus is as inevitable as the solution to a puzzle that was obvious from the beginning. The riff is tighter than a structural engineer’s worst nightmare. Four hundred thousand YouTube hits and rising. Which is to say that four hundred thousand people have been warned. They can’t say they haven’t been warned.
‘Dead To Rights’ — Six minutes and seven seconds of an experience in unpleasant places with no guarantee of ever leaving. It might, in the hands of another artist, be a plea for editorial intervention. It is not. It is an experience. And an experience in unpleasant places. It is like being prosecuted as an individual, bit by bit, with the leisurely confidence of a prosecution that knows it has already won. It is the longest track on the record. It is the heaviest track on the record. Coincidence? Don’t make me laugh. Coincidence is for suckers. Suckers believe in coincidence.
‘Deep Cover Shakedown’ – The title of a film that was probably greenlit in 1986, shot in six weeks in some tropical hellhole of a place, and straight to video, but still manages the greatest car chase ever put on tape. And the riffs are this good that the rest of the album hasn’t even bothered to try and keep up. Like a hitman showing up to the job in a linen suit, and nobody even bothers to ask him what he’s doing. Everybody knows. Everybody knows, but nobody cares. Because they’re too busy enjoying the ride.
‘Feet To The Fire’ – A gradual, academic increase in temperature, the confidence of a man who has made his choice, and is now simply waiting for you to catch up with the full implications of it. It doesn’t hurry. It doesn’t have to hurry. It has time. It has the luxury of time. And the question is, do you have the luxury of time? It is the most deadly five minutes and forty-three seconds of an album that has not been lacking in deadly minutes.
‘The Show’ – And the band gets to let loose a little bit, and it’s like a wolf deciding to walk instead of run to the finish line because the outcome was already a foregone conclusion anyway. A little looser than everything else that is going on around it. A little heavier than most bands’ entire discography. A little more relevant to the point that the point is being made.
Metal Church aren’t chasing anything. They’re not chasing algorithms. They’re not chasing a rebrand. They’re not chasing an audience that may not enjoy the edges being just a little too sharp. They’re not featuring anyone. They’re not doing Rap Metal. They’re not doing Nu -Metal. They’re not doing Stoner Doom. They’re not doing any of the various choices that a band with their history can reasonably be expected to make in order to prove to the world that they’re still relevant. They’re not working with a producer from another genre to give their album a little bit of that flavor.
What they ARE doing is making Metal Church music with what is clearly a very good lineup, mixed and recorded well, with the track order carefully considered by people who understand that an album is an argument and the order in which you make your statements is the key to determining the conclusion that the reader will draw from the arguments you’re presenting. They’re doing the thing that they do. They’re doing it at the level that they do it. They’re doing it without apology. They’re doing it without qualification.
This is a band that is creating music in a world that is so focused on the idea that nothing is important unless the fact that something must be new can be worked in somehow. This is either the most magnificently irrelevant thing that the band could have possibly done, or this is the most magnificently relevant thing that the band has ever done. I think that this is likely a little bit of both, and I think that this is likely a little bit of both because that is where the most interesting things are. The work that was done here in the production by Vanderhoof is impeccable without being sterile, heavy without being muddy, and puts the band firmly in the now without ever feeling like they are trying to get there—a difficult thing for any band or record to do well, something that many lesser bands and records of this style struggle mightily to achieve.
The mixing work done by Zeuss at Planet Z is characteristically wonderful, with everything in its proper place and the low end powerful but never overpowering the high end, and the vocals done by Allen mixed like they are the only thing that mattered and not an afterthought.
My cat reappeared around the time that the song ‘Heaven Knows (Slip Away)’ was starting. She was sitting on the edge of the desk looking at me as I was typing away on my computer with the same look of disdain that she usually reserves for the things that she finds most contemptible, the things that she finds most compelling. I sat there with her during the second half of the record.
‘Heaven Knows (Slip Away)’ – The only time we even touch on the depth of all the emotions that make us human. The vocals by Allen take a slight step up in inquisitiveness, the riff takes a slight step up in profundity, and for about ninety seconds, you might think that this album was going to be about something with a little feeling. Not a chance, of course. The chorus comes in, and it is back to reality, reminding you of just where you are: a Metal Church album. You weren’t going to be softened up, were you?
‘No Memory’ – Four minutes and thirty seconds of a band playing something with an accuracy that borders on the surgical, and then stopping. No long outro, no break, no chance for the guitarist to think that perhaps now would be the time to show the listener something he’s been working on. It simply is what it is, and that is that. I will not argue with that.
‘Wasted Time’ – Turns up at the back end of the album with the manic intensity of a man who’s just glanced at the clock and has some very strong views on what he sees. The title could be ironic, as the band are thirteen albums in, and precious little time is left in which anything is wasted. It could be a threat, of course, against some unknown foe. I think it is probably a little of both. They know they don’t get to decide when they get it all.
She took off again around the time that the song ‘My Wrath’ was starting. I like to think that this was because of the power of the closer, but I suspect that it was my presence.
‘My Wrath’ – does not end in the kind of introspection and gratitude that other bands might indulge in and get away with. No, it ends in wrath. A specific wrath. AN owned wrath. An owned and personalised wrath. The last note fades away, and the silence that follows is not so much the end of the music as recess time. Because these are men who aren’t finished. Men who are simply pausing. God help us all.
‘Dead To Rights’ is not an album that seeks to convert the unconverted. ‘Dead To Rights’ is an album that seeks to speak to the converted. ‘Dead To Rights’ is an album that seeks to speak to the converted in an impassioned fashion. Dead To Rights is an album that seeks to speak to the converted from the point of view of people who have spent the last forty years telling the converted just how important this music is. And if you are the converted—I’m transparently and embarrassingly the converted—then ‘Dead To Rights’ is a very good album from a band that makes music that is of the straightforward and unostentatious excellence of real lifers.
To everyone else, the door is there. It is a loud record. And I suppose you know by now if you’re willing to find out about it.
TRACKLISTING:
Brainwash Game
F.A.F.O.
Dead To Rights
Deep Cover Shakedown
Feet To The Fire
The Show
Heaven Knows (Slip Away)
No Memory
Wasted Time
My Wrath
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Jon Deaux and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
