Dead Child

David Pajo’s recent career moves have veered between his increasingly meditative folk rock solo recordings and a revisiting of Slint, the spectral post-rock band of his Louisville, KY origins. With his new Dead Child project, Pajo returned to the Kentucky homestead with two latter-day Slint alums (Michael McMahan and Todd Cook) and brewed up this metal quintet. Their sound is rooted in late ’80s power metal but includes touches of dirge-paced ’70s rock and grind-appropriate iconography. Singer Dahm has his quasi-operatic inflections working the line breaks and the double guitar attack is nice and Priest-ly, though weird little hints of "Good Morning, Captain” glitter through unexpectedly. Questions of lineage and authenticity, as important in metal as they are for arranged marriages, may give some headbangers pause but this is not a metal "homage” (read: in-joke) in the vein of Rob Crow’s Goblin Cock side-project. If satire is the goal then it’s sublime beyond all apprehension. Rather than worry, it’s probably best to just let the ass kicking proper begin.