Dead Tired – ‘Satan Will Follow You Home’ [Album Review]

Ever since I first heard Dead Tired back in 2016, I felt this was the beginning of something special. That was confirmed when I got the chance to grapple with their following EP in 2019. Since then, the world has changed, and I wondered when I got my grubby little hands on this first full-length of theirs how it might have changed them. And reader, I’m happy to say it’s honed them.

The album wastes no time in going for the jugular with opener “Predatory Loans.” It’s apt subject matter for a band based out of Hamilton, considering the sheer number of payday loan sharks and pawnbrokers that pollute this city. But it speaks to a wider problem that pervades, and that’s the beauty of punk at its best: calling out issues in your own locale which others confirm (and resist) abroad. The track bleeds into “Show Me A Sign,” a driving shred fest that shows off more of the group’s metal routes while firmly planted in the hardcore punk sound and ethos for which the band is becoming known.

After this initial blast of frantic hyperbole, the album comes to a halt, launching into the (somewhat) eponymous “SWFYH,” a dead march of riffs and aural lamentation. It’s an ‘album’ track (think “Jane Doe” or “You Fail Me”) that lives up to its namesake, chaining the listener and dragging them through the band’s own hellscape on hands and knees until reaching its cavern of nightmares. When it finally ends, it opens up to more of the ravenous hardcore that Dead Tired effortlessly straddles.

George Pettit’s iconic voice has undergone some slight mutation, now bathed in noise. It’s less thrusting, instead embedded in the aural landscape. That doesn’t make it any less brutal; on the contrary, it’s raised the foundation of the din through its accompaniment and created a wall of…well, not just noise. More like a wall of tumult. And that theme persists across down-tempo tracks such as the already noted “SWFYH” and other examples such as the suitably titled “Creeping Dread.”

Dead Tired in 2022 by Vanessa Heins

The experimentation didn’t stop with sound engineering or song arrangement. Saxophone strains on “Vast Lethality” give us hints of Idylls and The Jesus Lizard in equal measure while still retaining their clangorous sound that has found its refined presence on this album.

By the time bittersweet closer “Domestic” caps off the record, it’s time to finally breathe. Satan Will Follow You Home is a snarling, tightly coiled experiment that flaps from the rafters even while it hisses from the corner. This is an album teeming with meanness and ugliness, with beatific strains and moments that belie the group’s appreciation for both sides of the divide between heavy music and its counterparts. It’s an exciting time for the band, no doubt, but it’s even more exciting for anyone who is going to be lucky enough to catch the group on their initial charge out of the gate in the live music circuit.

Satan Will Follow You Home Track Listing:

1. Predatory Loans
2. Show Me A Sign
3. SWFYH
4. Breakfast Of Participants
5. Vast Lethality
6. Tyrants Palace
7. Creeping Dread
8. New World Pigs
9. Aging Out
10. Domestic

Run Time: 39:28
Release Date: July 8, 2022
Record Label: New Damage Records