DEAD – Raving Drooling

DEAD are a truly special band, and also a criminally underrated one.

These two dudes live and operate on a land stolen from the Jaara people, aka Castlemaine, Australia and are among the hardest hitting two-pieces you’ll ever find.

If you come across this band for the first time, you might want to check their thorough back catalog, as well as their endeavors in running the independent label WeEmptyRooms. They are also as DIY as it gets—DEAD even draw and print their record sleeves & covers themselves. If you’re no stranger to how DEAD sounds, then you know I might preach to the converted when I say that Raving Drooling is a true ass-whipping banger of a record!

Jem and Jace play their own blend of bass & drums heavy rock music, some might want to categorize as Noise Rock or something along the lines of Melvins, maybe a tad faster.

But somehow they’ve found their ways around the usual limitations of bass/drums bands, and their sound is crushingly heavy yet dynamic and complex at the same time. You don’t miss anything from not having another guitar in their setup. Raving Drooling shines with truly original and exciting songwriting on top of high energy vocals and some of the hardest hitting drummers in business!

This is one of the bands I really dreamed of getting to play in Sofia for a long time. History remembers a failed attempt to bring them over here from Italy or something back when they were touring Europe a couple of years ago. Back in the day, this got me into bouncing some emails with them and I have to say both Jem and Jace are cool, down to earth, and incredibly friendly human beings. I really hope our paths will come across at some point.

DEAD’s earth-shattering album Raving Drooling is out on LP via Wantage (USA), WeEmptyRooms (Australia) and Rock Is Hell (Austria). Each release has a hand-pulled cover and is somewhat unique but all are just as special. Oh, they also just dropped a video that you can watch down below.

Get this one record. Seriously.

It’s THAT good.