A mosaic of all the most dynamic aspects of garage rock, punk, and pop rock, Louisville-based five-piece band Deady is set on mainlining infectious sonic energy straight into the ears of listeners with their new album Hunka Junk, which hit streaming September 18th via Romanus Records, and vinyl on September 26th.
Lauded for their high-octane spirit captured in music videos such as “R.I.P.” and “Hot Damn,” Deady’s ability to rile up crowds is fiercely apparent.
The videos’ swirling displays of flashing lights, headbanging, and kicks and punches thrown in moshpits are highly emblematic of their juiced-up aura, a frenzy the band has taken beyond the studio countless times to live audiences up and down the eastern United States. This energy has snagged Deady opening slots for bands like FEAR, Lightning Bolt, Water From Your Eyes, and Shannon & The Clams.
Their newest album is all over the place, though far from tastelessly or carelessly so. A jagged patchwork of shredding guitars, raucous, tight drumming, and unfearing vocals give way to melancholic acoustic plucking and tender crooning at the drop of a hat, delivering an emphatically emotive album throughout the album’s run.
This Dazey and the Scouts-esque calamity is headed by lead singer Mandy Keathley, accompanied by guitarist Chyppe Crosby, bassist Clayton Ray, and drummer KJ Bechtloff, with Crosby who recorded and mixed the new album.
Hunka Junk opens with the impassioned “Systematic Slaughter,” an ode in sound and lyrics to classic punk, about clawing one’s way out of the jaws of the corporate rat race. It is fun, caustic, and high-tempo, a fittingly in-your-face prologue for the rest of the album.
“Spinning Rooms” is the fourth song on the record, which in line with the band’s ability to weave between genres with lightning-speed transmission, switches gears to present a tune decidedly tinged post-hardcore, à la Title Fight. An equal-parts melodic and gnashing track, it is a tornado in song form, beckoning sonic stormchasers to lend an ear.
Never on autopilot for too long, Deady lets up on the gas for Hunka Junk’s eighth track, “Goodnight Bitch,” a rare moment of down-tempo acoustic contemplation. Likening chasing chemical highs to a dog chasing trees, the song speaks on feeling pacified by malaise and being sentenced to running off the fumes of blind faith in trivial pursuits. Despite being a marked departure from Deady’s typical pace, it serves as a frictionless switchup into a hauntingly beautiful interlude.
Picking up the pace yet again for the flippant song “Hunka Junk,” Deady shows there’s still loads of gas left in their tank. It is a jolt of contagious erraticism and abrasiveness, foaming at the mouth with vitriol. Garnished with biting, profane backing chants, this track is headbangingly fun, a foul-mouthed earworm of a song.
The band recently had their album release show at Louisville’s Mag Bar on September 18th, and something tells me there’s plenty more to come from this raucous Louisville slugger.
