Album review: The Dead Deads – Tell Your Girls It’s Alright

Corey Taylor offers to guest with you, and everyone from Paul Stanley to Lzzy Hale is lining up to sing your praises. All you’ve got to do now is produce the killer album that everyone’s waiting for. No problem, right? It would have been easy – understandable, even – for The Dead Deads to wilt under the heat of expectation, but with a healthy disregard for convention and just a hint of nonchalance, the trio have done nothing of the sort.

Tell Your Girls It’s Alright takes its cues from the grunge and alternative acts that inspired the band members during their college days, but the quirky arrangements and unlikely bursts of brass and even gospel bring unexpected spice. It’s on Murder Ballads II, a follow-up to a song on 2016's For Your Obliteration, that the Slipknot frontman duets (he also provided lyrics). It’s a glossy, sinister coil of a song that unravels slowly, but it’s nothing like the best track on the album. Look for the likes of First Tooth, with its addictive chorus, or Hey Girlfriend, which gushes in on a girth-heavy riff that Kurt Cobain would have been proud of, as better candidates.

You’ll also want to consider Thinkers And Preyers, one of those songs with hidden layers that demand repeat listens, and the surprisingly epic Out Of The Sky. In contrast, Deal With Me struts around on funky stabs of sax, an altogether more immediate hit to the pleasure receptors.

This is an album that bravely darts from place to place, but without straying far enough to lose the path. It creates a unique identity for The Dead Deads, while at the same time producing enough topspin and trickery to please everyone. So yeah, you can tell your girls it’s alright – and while you’re there, tell your boys too.

Verdict: 4/5

For Fans Of: Weezer, The Pixies, Aerosmith

Tell Your Girls It’s Alright is released on September 10 via Rumble Records.

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