Kevin Keegan might be possessed. Or, if not that, the Dead Quiet frontman has some connection to a manic spirit, one that allows his bellowing scream to scrape heaven and his bandmates to reduce amps to smouldering pyres. IV, the fourth album from the west coast stoner metal wizards, features nine twisting odes of spiritual and earthly excess and ecstasy; there's simply no other way to push this kind of volume unless you've done a crossroads deal in the backwoods of BC.
Dead Quiet hasn't had a problem writing compelling songs with a unique sound. 2017's Grand Rites and 2020's Truth and Ruin were personal favourites precisely because of the band's fearless grandiosity, a mash-up of the smartest stoner riffs ever and an ardent religiosity delivered by Keegan's vocals, Justin Hagberg's keyboards, and a band that knows how to ratchet tension through a spiraling song. Sometimes, though, you'd need to settle in before pushing play, because you knew that Dead Quiet would be taking you the distance, adding another keyboard break, another solo, another epic build, on and on and on. Due to all the elements, their long songs sometimes felt, well, long.
However hard the band had to look in the mirror, IV shows Dead Quiet on a tear, playing as if there isn't all the time in the world. By paying further attention to integrating each instrument's contributions and the space their songs occupy, the band have crafted their most complete album to date. Each song does something different with their core sound with plenty of the old flair to impress. The results are stunning.
IV starts with "The Hanging Man": a drum intro from Jason Dana snakes and rolls before the full band joins in, driving riffs already building a head-nodding foundation, including Hagberg's Hammond-esque tones just painting the whole song in bombast. When Keegan's vocals punch in, the melodies ramp up, the chorus pays off, and then the rest of the song follows that promise.
When the band does slow down it's according to plan, the spidery guitar solo carving space and leading right back into a crushing refrain. And true, this is kind of what Dead Quiet has done on previous albums, but now it feels like the musicians are all in tandem, arms linked and devil horns thrown high. Whereas a song like "Moon Curser" from Grand Rites felt huge and detailed due to the number of instrumental break-outs, "The Hanging Man" adds all those parts up to a greater whole in less time.
That integration is all over the album. By the numbers, IV is around that sweet 45-minute mark, with seven full songs and two short transitions. By dividing the album into thirds, Dead Quiet make the whole exercise feel tight and essential. Compared to Grand Rites' hour-plus sprawl, IV manages to make each song unique. Even a long song like "Dying to Live Again" doesn't drag because Dead Quiet actually push the 'quiet' part of their name into the song's back half by slowing down and giving room for all that tortured emotionality to spill over. Anchored to a defeated cry, the melody kicks back in the last minute yet again for a final emotional gasp. It gives credence to Keegan's estimation of IV, that "we really arranged everything as a group and it has the most character because of that. It's definitely an adventure."
All the songs on IV have the band positively dancing through the tombs, but the back third puts them in that adventurous space Keegan was crowing about. "High Roads" is a true old-school blues workout, speedy riffs coating the highway's blacktop while the keys zig and zag with each push on the gas pedal. It's a straightforward song, a flashy showcase for the band that could easily destroy in a live setting, and a great renewal of what Dead Quiet perfected on their previous album. The last two songs pair well as signposts for where the band will be headed. "Murder City" is almost a trudge, as slow as the band can play while keeping all cylinders firing; it's a different kind of tension, coiled and deadly as a rattler in the shadows.
And lastly, the delicate sincerity of "Leave the Light on" sounds closest to a ballad, with Hedberg's piano lines leading a shuffling rhythm and pedal-steel wails. Mournful and resistant, this last song applies the full force of the band for an appropriate finale. After a whole album of showing how they can sound as big as the sky, Dead Quiet remind you that these songs come from real places of pain and learning. "Leave the light on when you go," Keegan sings, because we all need a beacon that can call us home. It's an echo of dread romanticism that the band raged with throughout the album's front half, a feeling and need for something to hold tight when darkness creeps in.
That old Henry Rollins claim about the first six Black Sabbath albums is true for plenty of metal bands, but Dead Quiet are drawing from a different well. This is stoner metal of a different lineage, one that comes by way of the Dio-fronted Sabbath albums with a needle's groove worn deep through "The Sign of the Crooked Cross," teens turning the radio's volume up for ZZ Top and ELP, and maybe even borrowing their cool uncle's Hawkwind records. Keegan and Co. took careful notes on the huge riffs but also the arrangements, making their songs clear as moonlight shining off a headstone. It's still stoner metal, right? Cool, cool — but there is a gulf (or maybe a mountain chain if we're being geographically accurate) between Dead Quiet's sound and where the rest of the genre seems to be today. And thank the heavens for that.
(Artoffact)Dead Quiet hasn't had a problem writing compelling songs with a unique sound. 2017's Grand Rites and 2020's Truth and Ruin were personal favourites precisely because of the band's fearless grandiosity, a mash-up of the smartest stoner riffs ever and an ardent religiosity delivered by Keegan's vocals, Justin Hagberg's keyboards, and a band that knows how to ratchet tension through a spiraling song. Sometimes, though, you'd need to settle in before pushing play, because you knew that Dead Quiet would be taking you the distance, adding another keyboard break, another solo, another epic build, on and on and on. Due to all the elements, their long songs sometimes felt, well, long.
However hard the band had to look in the mirror, IV shows Dead Quiet on a tear, playing as if there isn't all the time in the world. By paying further attention to integrating each instrument's contributions and the space their songs occupy, the band have crafted their most complete album to date. Each song does something different with their core sound with plenty of the old flair to impress. The results are stunning.
IV starts with "The Hanging Man": a drum intro from Jason Dana snakes and rolls before the full band joins in, driving riffs already building a head-nodding foundation, including Hagberg's Hammond-esque tones just painting the whole song in bombast. When Keegan's vocals punch in, the melodies ramp up, the chorus pays off, and then the rest of the song follows that promise.
When the band does slow down it's according to plan, the spidery guitar solo carving space and leading right back into a crushing refrain. And true, this is kind of what Dead Quiet has done on previous albums, but now it feels like the musicians are all in tandem, arms linked and devil horns thrown high. Whereas a song like "Moon Curser" from Grand Rites felt huge and detailed due to the number of instrumental break-outs, "The Hanging Man" adds all those parts up to a greater whole in less time.
That integration is all over the album. By the numbers, IV is around that sweet 45-minute mark, with seven full songs and two short transitions. By dividing the album into thirds, Dead Quiet make the whole exercise feel tight and essential. Compared to Grand Rites' hour-plus sprawl, IV manages to make each song unique. Even a long song like "Dying to Live Again" doesn't drag because Dead Quiet actually push the 'quiet' part of their name into the song's back half by slowing down and giving room for all that tortured emotionality to spill over. Anchored to a defeated cry, the melody kicks back in the last minute yet again for a final emotional gasp. It gives credence to Keegan's estimation of IV, that "we really arranged everything as a group and it has the most character because of that. It's definitely an adventure."
All the songs on IV have the band positively dancing through the tombs, but the back third puts them in that adventurous space Keegan was crowing about. "High Roads" is a true old-school blues workout, speedy riffs coating the highway's blacktop while the keys zig and zag with each push on the gas pedal. It's a straightforward song, a flashy showcase for the band that could easily destroy in a live setting, and a great renewal of what Dead Quiet perfected on their previous album. The last two songs pair well as signposts for where the band will be headed. "Murder City" is almost a trudge, as slow as the band can play while keeping all cylinders firing; it's a different kind of tension, coiled and deadly as a rattler in the shadows.
And lastly, the delicate sincerity of "Leave the Light on" sounds closest to a ballad, with Hedberg's piano lines leading a shuffling rhythm and pedal-steel wails. Mournful and resistant, this last song applies the full force of the band for an appropriate finale. After a whole album of showing how they can sound as big as the sky, Dead Quiet remind you that these songs come from real places of pain and learning. "Leave the light on when you go," Keegan sings, because we all need a beacon that can call us home. It's an echo of dread romanticism that the band raged with throughout the album's front half, a feeling and need for something to hold tight when darkness creeps in.
That old Henry Rollins claim about the first six Black Sabbath albums is true for plenty of metal bands, but Dead Quiet are drawing from a different well. This is stoner metal of a different lineage, one that comes by way of the Dio-fronted Sabbath albums with a needle's groove worn deep through "The Sign of the Crooked Cross," teens turning the radio's volume up for ZZ Top and ELP, and maybe even borrowing their cool uncle's Hawkwind records. Keegan and Co. took careful notes on the huge riffs but also the arrangements, making their songs clear as moonlight shining off a headstone. It's still stoner metal, right? Cool, cool — but there is a gulf (or maybe a mountain chain if we're being geographically accurate) between Dead Quiet's sound and where the rest of the genre seems to be today. And thank the heavens for that.
