DRI:
Dealing with It: LP
A vinyl reissue of DRI’s second long player (or their first LP, if you consider its predecessor merely a twelve-inch repress of their Dirty Rotten EP 7”, no matter what its covered said), wherein Kurt and his Imbeciles cleaned up the recording process and tightened up the playing all the more, yet didn’t let up on the throttle one whit. Here they took the speed and brevity that got them all the attention in the first place and honed it into something wholly original—there was no shortage of lesser bands cranking shit out just as fast, but there was no mistaking a DRI tune when they came on in a given rotation. Some think of this as that “bridge” record between DRI the punk band and DRI the metal band, and there are no doubt legions of fans who will vehemently disagree with me, but I prefer to think of it as the last truly great thing they’ve released to date, ‘cause that slide into “crossover” metal was just plain bad and I’ve yet to hear anything from them since that comes close. –Jimmy Alvarado (Beer City)