Album Review: Dead Heat - "Process of Elimination"

 

Sometimes, you want something familiar.  That you know will satisfy, an old favorite.  You go to the Italian restaurant with every intention of expanding your palette with an exotic-tasting Tuscan or Sicilian dish, but in the end you order the chicken parmigiana.  You know it won’t let you down, and it tastes like comfort and cheese (and if it did let you down, anything else would have been much, much worse.)

That’s kind of how Dead Heat’s “Process of Elimination” feels.  You like thrash, and you need something that will stick to your ribs, so you grab some, already knowing what it tastes like.

The west coasters who comprise Dead Heat are following up their 2023 debut with this full-length record, and it’s more of the thrash you know and love.  There are scads of crunchy riffs and headbanging to be had, and some good, old-fashioned thrash breakdowns that make for easy mosh pit fodder. Take in the abounding solos, screaming vocals and lyrics that are firmly anti-establishment, and you have all the makings of a perfectly enjoyable thrash record, the like of which hasn’t really been released anywhere else yet this year.  

Now, the flip side to this is that “Process of Elimination” doesn’t feel very novel or particularly unique, although one doubts that was the point in the first place.  The album clearly follows the pattern of Power Trip’s classic Nightmare Logic, which has become rather the gold standard by which American thrash bands are judged since its release in 2017.  Process of Elimination doesn’t shine quite so brightly - there aren’t the single, earworm-y riffs of that celebrated album of metal, although Dead Heat’s “Enemy” certainly tries.  Dead Heat should also be given credit where it’s due - there’s a very solid bass sound that’s prominent on this record, in a genre that so often buries the bassist under a jagged pile of broken glass guitar.

Attentive readers may notice that they haven’t seen a lot of songs singled out in the discussion of this album, and that’s by design.  Apart from “Enemy,” the album’s best cut is its final one, “Hatred Bestowed,” which offers a little more patience in the build up and uses its longer duration (it’s four and a half minutes, so we’re not talking about “2112” here,) to explore some more dynamic constructions and sounds.  Other than those, though, the album washes over with a wave of similar songs that are all equally fine, and all kind of sound like each other.

The worst fault of Process of Elimination isn’t its own fault; it’s the fault of the time of its birth.  If this is the first thrash album a listener ever hears, it’s a marvelous record worthy of high praise.  

For the more experienced among us however, Dead Heat’s new record is something akin to a James Patterson novel, or some other form of so-called beach reading - it’s fun and you’ll enjoy it for what it is, but it’s not the kind of record that makes you go to bed thinking about its themes and complexity and uniqueness.