REVIEW: DINES X HEAFY – DINES X HEAFY (2020)

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At work, they give me coffee in a mug with a dinosaur on it. It is, they say a comment on the fact I live in the past.

It is true that I resist change. I still don’t have Netflix, I will never use Facebook and Spotify? Who needs it when you’ve got an iPod. I haven’t got a smart tv and I don’t feel I am missing out. Add to this that I once upset some impossibly young, hipster kid, who came into our office for a meeting claiming he was an “influencer” by asking him what he did for a proper job, and you will see that the modern world leaves me dumbfounded.

Matt Heafy is 11 years younger than me, and maybe he knows the score. I remember seeing Trivium a couple of times when they were younger and they always seemed the type of band that was ready to constantly evolve.

That is all over “Dines X Heafy”, and it’s the Dines bit that interests me. He’s a “You-Tuber” (it’s a thing I’ve heard kids talk about) and he’s joined with Matt here to make an EP with a difference.

Ok, I am being slightly light hearted, because Jared is very obviously incredibly talented. Save for a few solos he plays everything here and it is genuinely jaw dropping how good the five songs here sound.

Heafy too, sounds revitalised, finding a different style. The brilliant “Dear Anxiety” – the wonderful opener here – is at once cathartic, visceral, personal and entirely universal in that anyone who suffers this most pernicious of afflictions will recognise it.

Modern heavy metal, but neither a slave to fashion, nor looking back to the past, instead “Can We Turn Back Yesterday?” which rather despairs at the modern world in 2020, is capable of appealing to the old school metallers, as it is the BFVM or Killswitch fans.

The musicianship here from Dines is stunning. The way the drums thunder on “Dying At The Sight Of The Sun” and the way the expansive sound builds and broods is a joy. And Heafy has lost none of his knack for writing hooks.

Perhaps the most surprising one of all is “To Save Me From Myself” which is muscular power metal that might make Symphony X take notice, certainly it sounds like nothing you’ve heard from Heafy before.

Indeed, by the time the almost industrial, chopping strains of “We Lost It All” with its slightly Fear Factory feel, ends things, it is clear that this is a real gem.

Not the record you expected, maybe, but one you need to hear. And even though my stance is at odds with the modern world, maybe “Dines X Heafy” is proof that social media isn’t all bad.

Rating 8.5/10

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