Dog Fashion Disco -- 'Beating a Dead Horse to Death ... Again' [review]

Dog Fashion Disco - Beating a Dead Horse to Death... Again
Rotten Records (10/28/08)
Metal

Dog Fashion Disco was a band a little too eclectic for its own good. The group managed to form quite the devoted fanbase over its eight-year existence, but there was always the feeling that, given the right direction, they could have easily hit the big time.

Never is that point more apparent than on their new, posthumous release, Beating a Dead Horse to Death... Again, which somehow manages to be the band's best album. The collection of rarities and other tracks of interest shows the band in a light its proper albums never seemed to convey. Take the re-recorded Day of the Dead EP, whose four tracks open this set. Each song is a steamroller of heavy, foreboding metal, that manages to invoke comparisons to Ministry combined with any keyboard-heavy horror-metal outfit. Even the slower, more melancholic “Gardenia”, with its piano accompaniment, has a noticeable metallic edge just under the surface. And the reason these songs are so strong is because they weren't cluttered up by tempo-shifts and multiple genre change-ups.

Then there’s the flipside of what DFD could do: “Devil’s Wife” and “Barely Breathing”, recorded after the band called it quits. The two tracks were part of a pre-Polkadot Cadaver demo, which shows the band had the ability to record more commercial material when it set out to do so. The punk-influenced tracks could have easily found a home on modern-rock radio and are pretty catchy to boot.

The gem of the set is “Satan’s March”, a song recorded for the movie Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, which the band helped score. Also included on the set is a Melvins cover, “Anaconda”, which has a nice little DFD edge to it.

A set of live studio tracks are prototypical DFD material—that interesting blend of hardcore, metal, jazz and lounge fusion that fans grew to love over the years. Of particular note is the schizophrenic “Worm in a Dog’s Heart” and “9-5 at the Morgue”, both of which really capture the unique energy DFD could infuse into its music.

Rounding out the set are two “joke tracks” the band sent to its label rep during the recording sessions for the Adultery album to show off “a the new direction” the band wanted to take. “Turning Gay” sounds like a South Park outtake, and no words can really do justice to “Hank Steel the Real Queer Cowboy”.

This is a great collection of material that can appeal to diehards and non-fans alike. Even without the joke songs that you could take or leave, there are still 12 solid tracks that might not entirely represent the true DFD experience, but it's a nice representation of the best of what the band could accomplish. The only glaring omission would be more from the Dominion score (“Satan’s March” offers a nice taste, but only clocks in at 3:40). DFD was a band whose eccentricities made it stand out from the crowd, but on the other hand truly kept it from hitting the big time. Beating a Dead Horse... is a nice look back at one of the underground’s finest outfits.