The world wasn’t ready for Dopefight a decade ago. Would it be now, I wonder?

Guitarist/vocalist Owen Carty, drummer Ant Cole and bassist Epic-fail Hale put out the first of Dopefight‘s several split releases in 2009, along with a self-titled demo (discussed here). Their debut full-length, the 13-track, 50-minute Buds (review here) was a revelation when it followed in 2010. Here was a trio emergent in Brighton, UK, just at the cusp of a generational rollover. In the post about that demo is a link to Dopefight‘s MySpace page. By the time they took the stage at the first Desertfest London in 2012 (review here), heads in the crowd were talking about them as legends. Watching them on stage, I felt like someone standing in front of Saint Vitus in 1986 at the Palm Springs Community Center in that video Tony Tornay took.

Here was the fucking future, bashing itself whole-body over your head with what definitely felt like but wasn’t actually reckless abandon. Dopefight — whose moniker I’ll note was originally written as DopeFight — stood along with a group of English acts at the crest of a generational wave the impact of which continues to flesh out. Bands like Steak, Alunah, Grifter, Trippy Wicked, then Stubb and eventually Elephant Tree and so on, who in the last 10-plus years built UK heavy into a rich and varied underground second to none in the world, be it the US, Germany or Australia. Yes, Desertfest is a huge part of that in supporting up and coming acts, but that’s just the point. Dopefight were there at, and before, the start. Probably a little too early.

Because imagine a world in which Dopefight kept it going. Not only kept it going, but pushed further along the disaffected raw punk-doomcore of Buds in songs like “Brighton Town is a Fuckin’ Whore” or “Pistophelees,” the trio’s point of view evident even before the outright barrage of riffs starts. On Buds, the formula revealed itself (in part) to be starting a track with a fast riff, play another riff or two, sometimes they flow, sometimes it’s just these-are-two-riffs-and-fuck-you, then slowing down and sludging out later, and that’s where, generally, the vocals come in. There are departures, of course, as “Slug ‘n’ Mop” rolls its largesse in linear fashion and “Nob.Nod.Noi” crushes outright, but speaking broadly, the doom and the hardcore-derived aggressive shove both manifest in choice riffing and ferocious assault.

A second Dopefight album — perhaps following tours in the UK and Europe that didn’t really happen — might have found the trio pushing farther along these lines. Would they be more aggro? Groovier? Heavier in tone or faster in tempo or neither or both and more besides? Because with one record, well, you get a badass collection of songs, and at 50 minutes, Buds doesn’t owe you anything in terms of conveying where Dopefight were at circa 2010. With a second one, it would almost be the moment when we might have found out who they were going to be as a band. How would the follow-up compare to the debut? What did they carry over in sound? What did they leave behind? If you think of the changes their generational cohort has been through over the last 10-15 years, would Dopefight have been able to meet the standard of anger that “Baby Goat Sick” or the dragging-till-it-runs “(Don’t Inflict Your) Spawn (Upon Me)” set?

The potential here was huge. A homegrown Church of Misery in England’s green and pleasant land. Kids looking to clear away the dust gathered from the aughts with the sheer force of the air pushed by their amplifier worship. From Belzebong in Poland to Dopethrone in Montreal with scores in between, Dopefight were an incarnation of over-the-top heavy, crunchy stoner sludge, and they never got the chance really to be counted among those others. There was no second record. After Buds, they put out splits with Gurt, Lex Rhino and The Fucking Wrath, and there was another demo in 2012, but in 2013-2014, when they probably should’ve been announcing that they’d signed to whatever label to put out their next long-player, there was nothing.

And there were fewer labels at the time. Now, stick Dopefight on New Heavy Sounds, Heavy Psych Sounds, Magnetic Eye Records or Majestic Mountain, among a slew of others, and Buds would find ears. If this record was released as new in 2023, you’d have already heard about it. And yeah, maybe saying sludge still sounds like sludge 13 years later isn’t such a hot take — the point of genre is there are consistent aspects of style — but Buds was enough ahead of its time that there’d be no question of its relevance in the current underground sphere. The underground was lucky when Dopefight came along. If the band got back together today, the underground would be lucky again.

They announced they were done in Sept. 2012 and other projects began to take shape, mostly from Carty in the form of Grey Widow and Chubby Thunderous Bad Kush Masters. The latter released their own debut, Come and Chutney (review here), in 2018, and took on some of the disgruntled restlessness of Dopefight in a willfully quirky presentation — makeup, taking the piss out of heavy rock and nü-metal, life in general, tie-dye, etc. — and were active in 2021, and the drone project Thon seems to have taken shape from out of that lineup, but I’m not sure if that’s Carty or someone else from Chubby Thunderous behind it. It’s a far cry from Buds, in any case, if you’re following a family tree trajectory, Thon is on Bandcamp here.

To be sure, the world has gone on without Dopefight, and more bands have come and gone and come again and gone again in some cases. But in my mind, this was a trio who never got to realize their forward potential or contribute as much as they could have to the UK underground. Oh, what could’ve been. Second album in 2016, third album sometime between 2020-’21. They’d be over a decade old by now and probably some dingus like me would be calling them veterans. I wouldn’t have minded if that’d happened instead of the one and done.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

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Week sucked. I’m glad it’s over. My birthday was yesterday. Wrote the Howling Giant review as a favor to myself, and was going to pair it with a video interview — that actually turned out alright — I did earlier this week with all three members of the band. Well, Zoom got fucked up on my old-ass computer and I lost the interview. Review went up today, and that’s fine, but my special thing that I was going to have up for the end of their tour this weekend at Desertfest Belgium, the chat I got to do with the band when they were in Europe for the first time? Gone. It was a good talk.

The Patient Mrs. took off Monday and Tuesday from work, has Wednesday off anyway, and went back yesterday. So while I sat by myself and tried to finish that Howling Giant review — a record I started taking notes on over a month ago, mind you — a call came in from the principal over at the school that my daughter had punched her teacher in the stomach and had scratched at another kid’s face and was threatening someone with a chair or some such. Happy birthday, asshole. She had therapy yesterday evening. My mom came over for late dinner. I went to bed eventually. It was fine. I’m 42.

And the kid? What the fuck do you do? All the bribes, all the accommodations, all the help she’s getting at this point is in place. She has good days, but the message I’m getting from yesterday is that there’s clearly some gap in the fence keeping that kind of shit on lockdown. Impulse control is hard. Maybe she’s cold, or hungry, or misses her mom, or the dog. Who the hell knows. I said I heard she had a hard day, that I loved her and that today was another day.

Kid’s birthday is next week so this weekend is the big party. Gonna be a mess. You can come. Hit me up if you need the address.

Whatever you’re up to, I wish you a great and safe weekend. Have fun, watch your head, hydrate, all that. I’m just glad I fucking managed to finish writing this today.

FRM.

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Way back on Sept. 8 — which, is like, ancient history in Internet Dog Years (IDY) — one of the UK’s most irreverent sludge acts called it quits. Dopefight announced their disbanding on their Thee Facebooks thusly:

Official Announcement: It is with great sadness that we bring you all this news but we have decided to call it a day. Dopefight is no more. Unfortunately the differences between us as individuals, both personally and musically are now too great for us to continue as the friends we once were, let alone as a functioning band. We got to meet so many great people and did so much cool stuff as a band, we’re very proud of everything that we achieved! Apologies for the abruptness of this, sadly there will be no last show!

We’d like to thank every last one of you that has supported us in anyway, come to our shows, bought our records, let us crash on your floor etc. We are very grateful; we love you all because without you we could not have created so many amazing memories! It’s a shame that it has ended this way but time and people have to move on. All remaining merch will still be available to purchase, once it’s gone though it really is gone and our new split vinyls with Lex Rhino and The Fucking Wrath will still be released, we’ll keep you informed on the release dates. But don’t fear, new music projects are already on the way and there will be plenty of new music to come, we will keep you all informed, so please keep checking the page for all future announcements. Thank you and goodnight! RIP.

Don’t get me wrong, I was already really, really glad to have seen Dopefight at this year’s Desertfest in London (you’ll pardon me for recycling the photo above), but this changes everything. Aside from it being a massive shitter the trio couldn’t keep it together and continue to destroy both their own and the brain cells of everyone in their path, their departure leaves one to wonder just what’s next?

The statement above, though abrupt in its “sorry but we’re fucking done”-ness, does leave the door open. Dopefight‘s splits with The Fucking Wrath and Lex Rhino will be released, and though the band has put all of their merch on sale through their BigCartel store to get rid of it, the end of the statement still talks about other projects being underway, so there’s hope yet for more to come from these dudes — if not in Dopefight form.

Best wishes to the members of Dopefight for their future projects and thanks for kicking ass while it was feasible for you to do so. Good band, taken too soon.

Here’s a victory lap through “Stonk,” for old times’ sake: