By Martin Popoff
Had Slayer turned this in as their new God Hates Us All album, they would have been as pleased with the resulting crazy-praise reviews as they've gotten for the real thing. Fact is, Dew-Scented's fourth album Inwards deserves similar accolades, while facing an uphill battle as the fourth album by a relative unknown. Potent, high-fidelity, old school thrash through and through, Inwards contains deep within its deafness an intelligence that is fresh for bands of this dastardly ilk. And it all starts with that weird name.
"I think basically we wanted to be at original," notes lead lacerator Leffe Jensen. "We are into the music we do and respect all the cliche's that we have to, but when it comes to the presentation of the band, the more brutal approach the other bands seem to have with their band names, we don't really get into that. And for some reason, all the really good metal names were taken. We just wanted to have something original, something that could have a lot of very tricky meanings and we really like the fact that this name doesn't really make a lot of sense. It's not a name that will directly guide you into the music we do. But that might be one of the challenges."
Four albums in, the band is getting its first North American release proper, as well as its first domestic issue in Japan. It's fortuitous that it happened now, because the band's last album Ill-Natured, was a bit muffled, and as Leffe sees it, a bit confused.
"I think on this one we tried to be more direct, to the point," contemplates Jensen. "As far as the writing goes, we've gone through some steps in the last two or three years. This lineup has been together ever since Innocent, our second album. We noticed that we really love technical bands and technical writing, but that we were missing a little bit on the focus on Ill-Natured. And we found out some of the songs we weren't really that willing to play live. We were missing on the aggression because of too many elements. So I think the biggest goal on this new album was just to be more direct, more catchy and just throw away the parts of the songs that don't really contribute to the aggression. And one of the other main differences is that we finally managed to get a really, really powerful sound, which just represents the music better. Some of the songs on Ill-Natured, with this type of production, would have had a different impact.
DEW-SCENTED - Germanic Thrash in Disguise? Page 2