Dave Grohl releases a new album under the name “Dream Widow” alongside the release of his new film “Studio 666”. The results are unexpected, to say the least.
From the music I write about typically, it may seem like the only music I listen to is pop music and hip-hop. While I do enjoy both of those genres, it should be stated that I grew up listening to hard rock and metal. Some of my favorite bands (System of a Down, Metallica, Black Sabbath) come from this section of music and I am always on the hunt for great hard rock and metal.
So, why don’t I write about it?
If you really want to find hard rock and metal these days, you will find it going to clubs and bars where bands sell CDs after their shows. In terms of skimming the charts though, you will not find much in this side of music.
Rock music fell out of fashion with the kids sometime around the fall of Emo and Pop Punk. The last “Rock” song to hit number one on Billboard was Nickelback’s How You Remind Me back in 2001, while Shinedown’s Second Chance was the last to hit the top 10 back in 2009!
Suffice it to say, the young people these days are not listening to rock these days.
It takes a little bit more digging these days to find rock music and even more digging to find halfway decent hard rock or metal these days. Most of what comes on the modern rock stations is “rock” acts turned pop hacks like Maroon 5 or Imagine Dragons, or “butt-rock” buffoons like Five Finger Death Punch. Even good bands like Halestorm seem incapable of putting out interesting rock music in 2022.
So, when modern rock stations began hailing a Dave Grohl side project as one of the best metal albums of the year, I was skeptical.
It would be easy for me to dismiss this project entirely. Grohl’s band Foo Fighters have always connected more with the pop aspects of rock compared to their contemporaries. As well, this is not even Foo Fighters taking a new sonic direction, but a soundtrack to a vanity project horror movie where Dave Grohl (playing the role of Dave Grohl) gets possessed and tries to kill a bunch of people.
Why should I be invested in the music of some rich rockstar when he is not even invested in it enough to release it as a band record, instead electing to release it under the name Dream Widow (the name of the fictional Metal band which possesses the haunted house the band find themselves in during the movie).
I can think of a million reasons why I should not bother with “Dream Widow’s” self-titled album. So, believe me when I tell you…
That this album is fantastic.
I think Dave is actually underrated as a vocalist. He may not be the Freddie Mercury type of singer, but he has the chops when it comes to screaming and growling. I have sorely missed screaming in modern music, screaming is awesome.
Dave gets to flex his vocals as well as an encyclopedic knowledge and affinity for old school metal. It doesn’t try to be Metallica’s Master of Puppets detailing the horrors of war and it doesn’t try to be Slayer’s Angel of Death detailing the horrors of The Holocaust.
Grohl’s lyrics are not going to blow any minds (they are all about paganism and being in hell) but it does feel authentic to the style he is emulating. He does not hold back in any way either, unloading some truly nasty screams and some fantastic solos. Grohl’s knack for melody comes into play with some great choruses which can get stuck in your head in an instant.
Dave’s vocal delivery jumps from deep delivery like Black Label Society’s Zack Wylde to a defiantly punk sneer akin to The Misfits’ Glenn Danzig.
An album which I would compare this is King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard’s 2019 metal album Infest the Rats Nest. Both albums function as tribute metal albums drawing inspiration from the great metal of the old times. While King Gizzard drew loads of inspiration from 70’s metal such as Black Sabbath, Dave seems more inspired by the 80’s and 90’s metal which he came up in the music scene alongside.
The album starts with a sprinting track in Encino, wherein Grohl lays down some truly brutal death metal screams while helpfully instructing us on how to carve a pentagram.
What a wholesome guy.
The lead single from the album March of the Insane takes a similarly thrashing and bashing path (with a riff like something one might hear on Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All) where Grohl sounds completely unrecognizable. He sounds here more like the demon he plays in Tenacious D’s film The Pick of Destiny, growling and snarling about how he is like, the devil or something.
Lyrical variety is not this album’s biggest strength.
We get the best track of the record near the beginning in the form of the Pantera-like cut Cold. The lyrics seem to come from the perspective of a Freddie Krueger-like figure (which makes more sense within the context of the film) while the chugging riff builds up to a great solo near the end.
Not to mention that the scream Grohl unleashes at the end of each chorus is skin crawling (in a good way).
The Sweet Abyss and Angel with Severed Wings both elect to thrash about until the chorus where they go half time, giving Grohl the time to spit out some sweet metal melodies. These are both fun tracks, but they do not hit the highs that Cold does. They are still worthwhile cuts though.
A track which does hit the highs of the second track would be Come All Thee Unfaithful. Stupid name aside, this track hit some Iron Maiden style guitar harmonies before throwing into a complete rager. The chorus also falls to half time, but Grohl’s screams do not let up, with the word “come” hitting so brutal that it could peel the paint off the walls.
The final track is a 10-minute instrumental track where Grohl (by his own admission) sticks music from a bunch of random metal cuts he had laying around and stuck them together. I complain when King Gizzard does stuff like that, so I will also say that this song is not a mind-blowing journey or anything like that.
That said, I find it worthwhile and fitting to the album. It doesn’t bother me, and I enjoyed it while listening to the album.
Just do not go in expecting 21st Century Schizoid Man or anything like that.
(And by the way, the title (according to Grohl) translates to “Tears of God”)
I really enjoyed this project. It is not this deep and complex metal masterpiece or anything like that. What it is though, is a fun romp through some well-constructed and impressively performed metal tracks. Even more impressive is that besides some of the lead guitar, the music on this album is all done by Grohl himself, including the vocals, the rhythm guitar, the bass, and the drums (which are unsurprisingly amazing throughout the entire project).
It is not going to change any hearts and minds. If you like metal and hard rock though, I would highly encourage you to check this project out. It has been repeating in my headphones for days and I believe it will be in yours as well.