ALBUM REVIEW: Grave New World – Dickless Tracy
According to a quick Google search, a ‘DICKLESS TRACY’ is Australian slang for a policewoman. Oddly enough though, the deathgrind three-piece of the same name aren’t actually from anywhere near the land down under. Hailing instead from Slovenia, the trio took their name from the 1991 buddy-cop comedy The Hard Way. That may suggest a sense of humour – a wackiness even – but there isn’t much to laugh about on the band’s fifth full-length album Grave New World. It’s a brutal, violent record, with listeners only likely to crack a smile at its preposterously bludgeoning intensity.
As deathgrind goes, the focus on Grave New World feels very much on the ‘death’ side of the equation. The songs are longer than you’ll find in straight-up grindcore, and there’s definitely a touch of OSDM to proceedings here. A lot of this comes from guitarist/vocalist Tomi Cepanec, who deals almost exclusively in low gutturals and a nasty combination of thrashing and swampy riffs. His brother Ivan is a solid presence behind the kit too. For the most part, he plays with a nauseating and blasting speed, but tracks like The Apostles Of Terror show he’s also capable of slowing things down to a more oppressive heft where needed. Rounding out the line-up is bassist Jernej Rejc, his low-end cutting through with perhaps a surprising clarity and chunkiness.
DICKLESS TRACY don’t really do ‘highlights’, but if there is one stand out it’s surely the title track. This one’s just as punishing as anything else on offer here, but its main riff sees the band muster a SLAYER-esque gallop that lends it an instant degree of headbanging accessibility. Lyrically, much like the album as a whole, the song deals in themes of death and destruction. The band don’t mince their words either, with lines like “‘Round the funeral pyre we all dance/As the world burns in flames” dripping with bile and hatred.
While it’s hard to fault the performances or the individual tracks on Grave New World, if there is a criticism of the record it’s that it does become a bit of a slog. It’s certainly not a dynamic album, and it would no doubt benefit from at least a touch of variation. Without this, the record reaches a point where its tools of violence start to feel pretty blunt. It means a relatively standard 46-minute runtime ends up feeling far longer, with little on offer to keep our attention. It’s not as though there’s a significant drop in quality or anything, it’s just that perhaps a couple of these tracks might have worked better if saved for a later date.
Ultimately though, Grave New World is a solid enough record that does pretty much exactly what you’d expect it to. It’s not particularly remarkable, but it’s by no means a disaster either. All three of DICKLESS TRACY clearly know their way around their instruments, and the production captures them well. If all you’re looking for is something nasty and brutal then this album will do the trick, but if you were hoping for the next CATTLE DECAPITATION you may be left wanting a little more.
Rating: 6/10
Grave New World is set for release on September 15th via Monsterbilly Records.
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