In a lot of ways, I don’t envy DIY punk bands around today. Punk’s history and legacy is like a huge tub of unconnected Legos dumped out and scattered on the floor. It’s not enough to click together the Dag Nasty brick to the Dillinger Four base piece and say, “It’s an airplane!” because people will call you naïve. With thousands of little bits to put together in the imperfect world of jobs, flakey people, and limited resources—to build something spectacular, yet referential to previous history—is fuckin’ hard. Dead Mechanical have made a Lego diorama, replete with Baltimore’s skyline and a little band playing in a basement. They’ve even somehow got the Lego dudes sweating. And it’s rad. Rad in a way that, even with a deep knowledge of punk history, sounds familiar, but newly realized, fresh, and explosive. It’s like Dead Mechanical had somehow never heard of (pre-Field Day) Dag Nasty or Dillinger Four, but channeled the same awesome Lego-building spirit of both. Highly recommended.
–todd (Sex Cells, sexcellsrecords.com)