Like anybody else in the early stages of dreaming up a rock'n'roll band, Dead Confederate could have come up with any number of less evocative monikers. Instead, the Georgia five-piece receives perfect marks for settling on a name that reads exactly like what it implies: the first in what is sure to be a wave of new, poker-hot bands that puree alt-country tropes together with the muddy crash of grunge-- specifically in the unmistakable, steamrolling style of a one Kurt Donald Cobain. They are a band out of time, not place.
Snatched up last year by the same Gary Gersh that signed Sonic Youth and Nirvana to Geffen Records in the early 1990s, the Atlanta-via-Augusta (via-Aberdeen, har) quintet's riff formulas are throwbacks on many a level. Recorded in the Austin studio wherein The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's grisly sound effects were captured, the fusion wears its stitching well. Much of the arranged marriage between grunge and Southern-rock figures feels spurred on not by any subtle deviation in sonics, but the inescapable way in which frontman Hardy Morris pitches his fits. As soon as the first riffs of opener "Heavy Petting" kick tires, Morris looses Cobain-ified moans with a twist: drawl. Sure, there's the seductive blend of country-fried guitar tones and steel-mimicking wails any MMJ or even Band of Horses fan might jump at. But it's the all-too-familiar way Morris lacerates his vocal cords that glues it all together so powerfully. During the minor chord writhing of "Start Me Laughing", Morris' cribbing of Cobain comes dangerously close to tracing the bloody coughing of Bleach's "School". And if you recall that classic CD's closing track (er, "Downer"), you should have a pretty good idea as to the origins of Dead Confederate's lyrical aims.
The songs, penned primarily by Morris, have a darkness to match the tar-black, wind-through-dead trees arrangements. In the drag of "Goner", one of Wrecking Ball's shortest (and most direct) cuts, Morris returns time and again to a chorus that colors all sides of the record: "I could be gone, you would never know." Short and not so sweet, but that's just fine. Album centerpiece, single, and religious right invective "The Rat", finds all of these elements in a perfectly formed storm of tears and suds. And while "All The Angels" briefly lets a bit of light peek through, it shuts it out just as quickly. When one slaps loner angst like this on top of coiled chord progressions, the result can't feel like anything but a drawn-out gutting.
Ultimately, Wrecking Ball's successes holler at the kind of new genre hybridization that's become all the more welcome as early 90s alt-rock anthems take their seats in the classic rock pantheon. But the quiet-loud-quiet-loud dynamics and turgid crunch taste and feel just like middle school. And even if that weren't the case, it's safe to say we've heard aches like just these before. That was then, and this isn't a good kind of hurt.
