DREADNAUGHT, Dirty Music  (2005, Roadrunner)

The skull:
Well this is a pretty low-rent album cover, huh? Looks like an electrical panel cover that some hooligan tagged with rust-colored spray paint using an admittedly well-made stencil. Exciting.

The music:
This band ended up on Roadrunner in Europe, sorta making them labelmates with Opeth, Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree and Rush…or if you wanna be more cynical, fucking Nickelback. Really, though, they belong on Pavement. Dreadnaught play simplistic groove metal that flirts with death ‘n’ roll, and would appeal to Black Label Society fans. So the guitarist plays some pretty gnarly leads…it doesn’t matter when the foundation is formulaic junk like “Scenester” and “Cut Throat Blues.” I hate to inform vocalist Greg Trull: you are NOT Maynard James Keenan, and I’ll bet Maynard thinks your band sucks. Clean vocal verses, an explosion of aggro in the chorus, repeat ad nauseum. We’ve heard it four zillion times before. Once I figure out how much this 40 minutes of wasted time is worth, I’ll be sending them a bill. What hath nu- and alt-metal wrought? Fuckers.
— Friar Wagner