Band Appreciation: Dripping

Activity has been a little down here at Slam-Minded recently due to both Andy and I entering the drudgery of summer jobs. To remedy this though I figured I'd do some old fashioned appreciatin'

On the docket for today's round of appreciating is Dripping, a sadly departed group of potheads (I mean this in a loving way) from New Jersey. In their relatively unheralded career, they managed to put out one fantastic EP and one extremely good full length album, along with a couple of demos.

Dripping play slam (duh) but instead of just the usual breakdowns, blast beats and gurgles, they add samples of a wide variety of music and other sound bytes. This creates a very strange and somewhat fucked up listening experience, which only makes the very well done metal bits better. This bizarre approach to songwriting really hits its peak on the song "Skydiving Out of the Hemisphere", on their EP. The song combines an upbeat trance number with some absolutely mammoth slams. The juxtaposition of these two diametrically opposed musical styles works to make them both sound really good as the happy melodies play off the destructive rhythms of the breakdowns. It's one of those things that sounds crazy, but trust me it works great and is actually my favorite song. I don't want to say that everyone will like it, that is after all the pitfall of originality, but at the very least one should appreciate its uniqueness. Another one of my favorites is the song "The Interlude of Astrophysics" which begins with the quote "Life is just an interlude to death, you ever think about that?" Another voice replies: "Word son" and off to slam heaven we go.

Some of you may be saying "what the fuck?" after reading all this and I can't blame you. That's just the reaction this band will engender and it's all part of the fun. I implore anyone who hasn't done so already to give Dripping a try and just enjoy the great slams and utter weirdness. It's a rewarding to experience music that is so unique, yet still manages to keep all the aspects of this genre we all love.

Also of note, the liner notes for their full length Disintegration of Thought Patterns... are seriously fucked up. I've read a lot of death metal lyrics and am pretty jaded at this point, but these ones are still disturbing.