Not many bands (I actually can’t think of any off the top of my head) would be able to make use of 4 guitars and have it all make sense. Diarrhea Planet, on the other hand, are bringing shredding back to rock. And right from the opening of the album they aren’t afraid to let you know that they are not messing around.
“Lite Dream” moves from quadruple guitar solo, to straight up punk rock right before they march right into Iron Maiden territory. It makes sense to get as much use out of everything on stage as possible, so in order to do that there is a lot of stretching out, doubled guitars, solos, layered solos etc.
You may have heard about these guys before if you are a fan of Titus Andronicus (and why wouldn’t you be?) whom Diarrhea Planet opened for last year when Titus was touring for “Local Business.” I remember Patrick Stickles tweeting over and over again about how these guys would knock it out of the park night after night, but there was no way for many of us to know what he was talking about because they were pretty much just getting started. Now it turns out that Stickles was right. He was very right. The New York Times even agrees, as does NPR, who featured them on their All Songs Considered podcast.
Long story short, these guys are blowing up and you need to get in on the ground floor, it’s worth it. For a full album of guitar assault that knows how to make use of its resources, while at the same time managing to control songs to the point where they don’t go too far. Apparently it is possible to have a band like this with a minimum amount of wankery going on.
This live clip of “Kids” says it all. It starts out delicately enough, but it’s really only holding back before all hell breaks loose.
They are currently out on a seemingly never ending and constantly expanding tour (I’m actually leaving my apartment right now to see them here in Eugene) with support from NYC’s So So Glos (founders of Shea Stadium) and putting on a fantastic, amazingly energetic live show. More on that later.
The album, “i’m rich beyond your wildest dreams.” is pure rock and roll. I’m already sick of various sites saying that they are “equal parts Weezer and Whitesnake” as NPR does, or something similar that evokes the name of some crappy corporate rock hair metal band from the 80s. Whitesnake has nothing to do with this music. Whitesnake were a product of money-grubbing, coke-addled music execs in the 1980s. Whitesnake, in short, sucks. They sucked then and they suck now. There is no point in listening to them at all. But I digress.
There is a purity of the song writing here that takes more from the punk/DIY aesthetic than it does from the hair metal aesthetic. Sure, on the surface there are guitar solos all over the place, there’s finger-tapping, there’s palm-muted eighth notes on the lowest string (tuned to D or even C sometimes) but those things don’t add up to “hair metal.”
Diarrhea Planet – “Hammer Of The Gods”
A song like “Separations” has a lot more to do with catchy hooks and punk attitude than anything else. Let’s not discount the fact that these guys can play. There is not a single second of insincerity on this album. “Hammer of the Gods” is more punk than it is metal. The entire album walks the line in that way, which places it firmly more in the Misfits camp than it does with Whitesnake. There is a lot more going on than what it sounds like after listening to one guitar solo doubled in thirds. Everything on the album is done because it makes sense to the song, everything serves the song. We know this because not every track on the album is structured in exactly the same way. Some have verses and choruses, while others have extended intros followed by a verse and an extended outro (see “Ugliest Son”). At no point does anything sound out of place or arbitrary due to trying to jam ideas into a form that doesn’t make sense for that particular song. The same can be said for the album as a whole; there aren’t any songs in the sequencing that are placed there because, say, they needed an upbeat 1st single and then a slow song for a 2nd single (that a band like, say, Whitesnake would do. And maybe that is one of the reasons that they are pointless to listen to, Whitesnake I mean. They are so of the time. Everything about music like that and albums like theirs is that they are very “of the time.” Taken out of context, or listened to in 2013, those albums can’t connect with us anymore because they just don’t make sense anymore).
Diarrhea Planet is currently on tour practically non-stop, criss-crossing the country until the middle of December and it seems like they are adding dates into all the free time they can. If you live anywhere between Sand Diego and Portland, Maine it’s only a matter of time before they are in a town near you. Get out there and see them, say hi, and buy the album. It’s currently available on CD and Gold Vinyl (with download code) from Infinity Cat.
