Dirt Communion

Dirt Communion sound exactly like how a band named Dirt Communion would sound : stoner/sludge. You might as well put that in caps - Stoner/Sludge - because this is as typical or generic as it gets, depending on your inclination. If you're OK with pounding beers and watching like-minded souls tune down and rock, "typical" is good. If you want something new, "generic" is bad.

What doesn't depend on inclination is the awesome musicianship here. This is some of the tightest, swinging-est stoner/sludge since Pantera. It even has that clean, bright, slightly compressed sound. This type of tightness can't be glued together in Pro Tools. It comes from musicians locking in with each other and latching on to a groove, no matter how hard it kicks. And kick it does, over 11 tracks that vary only in tempo. The exception is one track that somehow sounds like Killswitch Engage gone sludge. That sounds like some Affliction shirt wearing nightmare, but it sort of works, mostly because it is the only weird moment. Otherwise, you know what this sounds like, even though you haven't heard it yet.

Perhaps we've gotten to a point where bands have become purely technicians. They're simply executing commands that someone else laid down, instead of coming up with their own. How else to reconcile such thunderous musicianship with such thunderous unoriginality? Five percent body fat, bench press of 500 pounds, IQ of 50: a killer package, perhaps, depending on your inclination. - Decibel Magazine August 2010 issue 70

Dirt Communion = Monster Magnet + Brand New Sin + Kyuss + Fu Manchu
Nevada’s Dirt Communion derives imagery of a crowded smoky bar filled with leather-clad biker guys, where the beer and hard liquor is flowing like a river and there’re brawls constantly breaking out. Antique Mechanic is a groove-churning machine that lies on the edge of a blade that just sliced up some doom, stoner and classic rock to flavor up your beverage of choice. This is a quite appeasing debut that encompasses plenty of rock and classic heavy-metal genres that will feed disconcerting rock appetites. Yeah, it might ring a bit too close to the mighty Monster Magnet, but that’s fine with me. This album has the great rocking-out and having-a-blast feeling to it, which is something too easy to appreciate and embrace. - Slug Magazine

Heavy metal was the first music I ever really cared about. As a young teenage boy from the suburbs, I didn’t have the sophistication to understand the musical complexity of jazz or classical music, or the delicate narratives of a folk song, the impassioned yearning of a soul song, the political aggression of a hardcore song, the lyrical flow of a rap song or even the melodic hooks of a pop song, but I could understand the monster riffs of Black Sabbath. This was music I knew was good as soon as I heard it.

For a 13-year-old, it can be hard to tell the difference between Bob Dylan and James Taylor—you don’t trust your own ability to discern the classic from the suckage. But from the opening riff of “Paranoid” on, you know that this music is undeniable and, what’s more, awesome.

Though after years and years of obsessively listening to music, I have learned to appreciate all those other styles of music, there’s still a part of me that finds nothing else quite as satisfying as a heavy, distorted guitar riff.

And this is the craving that Dirt Communion satisfies.

“We write as fans,” says guitarist Tony Ashworth. “We write what we want to listen to.”

Dirt Communion’s music relies on head-banging heaviosity rather than breakneck thrash speeds. In other words, if Dirt Communion was a dinosaur, it would be a brontosaurus, not a velociraptor. Though that’s not to say vegetarian—this is red meat music—but it’s the sound of rumbling and lumbering through the Jurassic swampland.

Drummer Logan Spurling calls it “dirty Southern metal,” slow and sludgy in the style of bands like Down and Eyehategod. Spurling is from North Carolina, Ashworth is from West Virginia, and both band members are proud of their Southern roots.

Many of the band members have other projects. Bassist Dan Bishop plays in a prog metal band called Puppetree, Spurling performs with the thrash band Otis, and vocalist Mark Earnest also performs as the music-journalist-turned-indie-rock-troubadour Mr. Vague.

The band members are quick to admit that, with Dirt Communion, they’ve chosen a funny band name.

“It’s a metallish sounding name, but just a little off, just odd enough,” says Earnest.

“People always give me a weird look when I tell them,” adds guitarist Eric Stangeland, an acclaimed veteran local musician and music instructor at Maytan Music Center. “This is the first band I’ve ever been in where it doesn’t feel like I’m doing the work.”

The other band members agree that, in this band, everybody puts in the extra hustle for the extraneous elements of being in a band: booking, promotion, updating the band’s website, and so on. The group effort also translates to the music: There’s no one guitar hero, but instead a nice tight blend.

The band is currently recording an album which they hope to release by this summer.

“I’m excited to see what happens,” says Earnest of the band’s future. “People don’t always realize it, but there are a lot of colors in metal.”

And any listener who appreciates pure, unadulterated, classic metal riffage, can’t do anything but bang his head with approval.

Brad Bynum - Reno News and Review (Apr 16, 2009) - Reno News and Review

"Good southern sludge from western Nevada seems about as likely as a new Michael Jackson/Edward Kennedy duet album, but goldarnit, I can't deny the soul evinced by Reno's Dirt Communion. The band's bluesy sludge touchstones -- Corrosion of Conformity, Down, Kyuss -- are pretty obvious. So is their talent. This stuff requires a tightrope walk down the line between behind-the-beat sloppiness and deep-pocket groove, and Dirt Communion get it right. They specialize in dirty rhythmic swagger -- songs like "A Trip to the Slaughterhouse," "Bombed (Last Call)" and "Rebuilt for Speed" swing titanium ballsack riffs low and slow, with a ragged guitar solo 3/4 of the way through the latter that twirls frantically and dissolves into distortion. Dirt Communion write better boogies than songs, and singer Mark Earnest (discovered while singing "Fairies Wear Boots" in a Reno cover band, natch) occasionally lives up to his last name too well, considering the nastiness of the music. Didn't you heed pappy Anselmo's lessons about the benefits of cigarettes and thick coatings of phlegm? But ya know, if I ran into Dirt Communion playing in a bar somewhere, I'd stick around to listen to their whole set. That's more than I can say for a lot of signed metal bands that I'd pay to see. I like my sludge metal like I like my women: with a fat bottom end. Hey-o!!!"

Etan Rosenbloom - Cerebral Metalhead.com (Aug 26, 2009)
- Cerebralmetalhead.com