Dust - Recoil (1996)

In 1996 Pantera released "Far Beyond Driven" and it reached number one on the billboard charts in the USA and Australia. A stunning accomplishment for any band, let alone a metal band. It was a grand time to be a metal head, and although it was not obvious at the time, it was the highest point of success for Pantera, and thus the beginning of the decline of "powergroove metal", other bands with new powerhouse interpretations of Metal were carving up the world. Fear Factory's "Demanufacture", Sepultura's "Roots", Meshuggah's "Destroy Eraze Improve", Tool's "Aenima" and a heap more experimental and innovative new albums were released within the same few months of "far Beyond Driven", effectively toppling Pantera from their throne of commercial extreme metal.

So when local metal band Dust chose to release their debut CD, "recoil", a heavily groove-based album, it could be considered that they were just a bit too late and missed their window. And it gets worse, the boys from Dust were doing a style of slower groove with stripped back drums a year or so before the Nu-Metal movement made that style cool, again missing the window of opportunity by a couple of years. Shockingly bad luck there, but all too often it is the way of things in the music world and we are powerless to prevent it. Well, maybe it wouldn't have mattered so much. There are good and bad things about "Recoil" and the Dust sound.

Dust released a full-length CD in a time when most bands were doing 4 or 5 track EP's, and at least in a local sense a quite unique album. "Recoil" is metal for sure but it was not particular heavy for the time, and is definately not what we consider heavy these days, but don't let that put you off. It is big and chunky and very moshy, full of dynamics gaps and punchy grooves, tight sounding and about in the heaviness vein of say Pro-pain or early White Zombie. It kind of reminds me of Gorefest during the "Sole Survivor" era only without the quasi-death vocals, or Crowbar without the thick as fuck guitar tone, just good 'ol laid back pub metal written to play live rather than listen to on a disc. In a local sense there are definate similarities to Sins of the Father. In a few more years we would probably label Dust's "Recoil" as "stoner Metalcore" or something else just as far-fetched, although we weren't that hung up on genre labeling back then.

Guitar tone is good and fits well with the bass, the riffage is profficient if not particularly interesting, with that kind of generic quality that suggests inspiration drawn from all over the metal bands map. Sometimes they thrash out a bit or weave around but more often than not they just chunk along in a casual groove, there is no sense of the wanky or pretentious, it is just workin' class metal. Although Stef the guitarist has the talent to shred out, the leads in "Pain" and "So" are some of the few highlights in that respect. A bit of experimentation with the timing structures wouldn't have gone astray maybe.

Drums are fairly basic with minimal use of double kicking, but with little explosions of more impressive footwork like in sections of "Hate Trip". There are these moments when they come together as a band and it meshes really well, and others where you can sense that they could use a bit more seasoning, a second album could have been a real belter.
Vocals are more of a concern. They are not heavy enough to be extreme or mellow enough to be commercial and just kind of sit in the middle in an uninspired way. I think that maybe it is just the way the studio has recorded the vocals, because there is a dual-tone thing going on that isn't always working with the songs, and I have vague memories of seeing them live and them sounding heavier than this. The vocal rhythms are good, although I personally found the vocals overall to be a bit monotonous.

The overview? Yeah, its alright, certainly better than plenty of other albums I have heard over the years. This is one of those albums that grows on you with a couple of listens and needs to be cranked up loud to get value out of it, but even so it unfortunately probably won't keep your attention for long. Metal evolves fast, and this album is 14 years old, an eternity in metal terms. It has lost some revevance for sure, but then how many of the albums released today will be any more revevant in 2024 that Dust's "Recoil" is now? Not many I reckon.

Hopefully enough of you are still metal enough to find out for yourselves.


Review by Jez.