Listen to a Tribute Album for Shallow North Dakota's Tony Jacome

All proceeds from the album go toward supporting Jacome's family

BY Kaelen BellPublished Jan 21, 2022

Tony Jacome — singer-drummer for Hamilton's sludge metal trio Shallow North Dakota — died in October 2021 at the age of 41 following a battle with pancreatic cancer. There was an outpouring of love from fans, friends and fellow artists at the time of his passing, and today, Learning Curve Records and No List Records have released another tribute to the beloved musician. 

Rhino Body Lover: A Tribute to Shallow North Dakota is a covers album that features 29 bands, including Adolyne, Swarm of Spheres, Fiftywatthead, Bison, Fuck the Facts, Bleeding Out, Worse, SIANspheric, Cell Press, Naw, Not Of, and more. 

A statement accompanying the album from John Crossingham of Not Of reads:

There's a predictable thing that happens when bands of a similar sound first get together. They talk about other bands. Specifically, what inspired them. What blew their minds. What got them believing that there was a place for a sound like theirs.

You go into those conversations expecting to hear certain names. The big ones. The canon. The touchstones. That's all well and good. But what really hits home is the moment when you find out that a band that felt like your own private discovery is just as special in someone else's heart as well. And hold on, that person knows about them, too. And that one …

For many of us in the noise/sludge/heavy music scene, that band is Shallow North Dakota. Despite a relatively slim recorded output through the '90s, capped by a self-released double LP swan song in 2004 that was barely promoted and never toured, this trio left behind a Velvet Underground-sized impression on those who heard them.

Part of that was their monolithic volume, a seismically registering force that dealt cannon blows to anything not welded in place. But more significant was their inversion of the classic power trio format. The axemen—guitarist Dan Dunham and bassist Michael 'Biff' Young—neither pounced nor preened. Instead, they faced inward, eyes trained deeply on the fulcrum of the group's might and character. Drummer and vocalist Tony Jacome. With Jacome acting as the accelerant, the three men spat particles of ionized sound into their own core—a reactor sealed by focus, bearing the brunt of their own nuclear force. Sound bonding and breaking. Over and over.

Near the start of this year, it was announced that Jacome had pancreatic cancer. By the end of September, he was gone. In the months between, many musicians found themselves engaged in that conversation all over again, but this time with an added dimension. The true breadth of Shallow North Dakota's influence seeped to the surface, rapidly and passionately. Still somewhat secret, but now known. And with all of this knowledge, came a sense of urgency to cement this shared experience.

That's what
Rhino Body Lover: A Tribute to Shallow North Dakota is. This 29-song tribute covers the majority of the band's catalogue—a honouring of the fact that if the SND catalogue was a touch slim, that was only because it was fat free. Every tune had its advocate—and this advocacy came from far and wide. From Finland's Throat to Vancouver's Bison, Montreal's The Great Sabatini to Minneapolis' Asbestos Worker and Texas' Grasshopper Lies Heavy, the assembled bands reflect the expansive respect the band still commands to this day.

You can stream the album below at Bandcamp. All proceeds from the Rhino Body Lover will go to support Jacome's "longtime soulmate Cheryl and their two young children." 

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