Dead Child are so-called “new metal,” and take their inspiration from the earliest days of metal music, before the genre became a commercial windfall, then a caricature of itself and finally, painfully to many, a violent riot of noise, a morbid fascination, and a straw-man-cum-fear-tactic wielded by the Christian Right. Despite a name that might hint toward the latter–certainly nobody will mistake Dead Child for something warm, fuzzy, or pious–former Slint bassist David Pajo and his crew are a pretty far leap from, say, the Scandanavian death metal that at its most gruesome, edges dangerously close to actual violence. Instead, Black Sabbath or early Metallica are the musical reference points, though vocally and spiritually it’s not nearly as deranged as either. Ultimately, Dead Child are not scary, which makes their style of metal the kind an indie kid could like, thrashing sufficiently but tame enough to not seem totally out of place on an iPod full of the Jens Lekman or Ladytron.
Which is to say that Dead Child’s greatest triumph on Attack, their first full-length, is to aid the transformation of metal from a subculture back into a genre that’s potentially palatable to casual adherents, or another tool at the disposal any creative musician. Faith No More did this once, as did Rage Against the Machine and Infectious Grooves back in the day. Since then, so much mainstream rock has been stuck in a painful post-grunge loop, forcing metal either underground or into pop territory, both of which obscure its potential to all but the most diehard. Attack is nothing less than an intervention–a much needed back-to-the-basics. For a taste, sample “The Coldest Hands” first, where lead singer Dahm channels pure Ozzy through a mire of sludgy, disfigured riffs and expert guitar solos that blaze like flares on a frigid night. Sure, Dead Child present themselves as all psychosis and musical brutality, but to reduce them to that cheapens their potential to be a kind of ambassador. For folks like me, Dead Child are also a commentary on metal, one that acknowledges that when a genre becomes too insular, it suffocates itself. Dead Child, on the contrary, fling open its doors, and by extension lets a lot more of us inside.
