Desert Storm Premiere “Salt of the Earth” Video; Live Shows in November
Oxford-based heavy burl riffers Desert Storm released their sixth full-length, Death Rattle (review here), earlier this year through APF Records. This is the second video premiere I’ve done from the record — the first was with the review, which is why I’m not spamming you with the link right now — behind that for “Bad Trip,” and, well, if they asked me to do a third, I probably would.
Here’s why: Desert Storm are among the dudeliest bands I cover on this site. You hear Death Rattle or anything going back to their 2010 debut, Forked Tongues (review here) — that’s right, I’ve been writing about these guys for over 12 years now — and you have no doubt that the parties behind it are dudes. From the guttural vocals of Matthew Ryan through Ryan Cole‘s guitar, Matthew Dennett‘s bass and Elliot Cole‘s drumming, and across different lineups, they have been no less consistent in this regard than in the growing quality of their songwriting, their expanding creative reach, and their maturity as performers.
Gender issues and gender expression — the performance of gender — have come into my life recently in a way that I never anticipated, and I find I’m thinking about these things differently than I used to. What is masculine? What does femininity look like? I’ve had occasion to examine these questions from a new point of view, as a parent, as an adult, rather than being a young (or old) person trying to figure something out about myself. But I’ve never been particularly ‘manly.’ I can move furniture, because I’m big, but that’s about as far as it goes, and maybe I find Desert Storm‘s expressed hyper-dudeness as a kind of fascinating, unconscious declaration of themselves. They border on chestbeating, but I know they’re on the right side of the line there, because if they weren’t, I wouldn’t have had words to say about them for the last decade-plus. Helps when the band kicks ass, just about always.
“Salt of the Earth” crunches with force and purpose, and if you dig the clip premiering below — and I hope you do — the full Death Rattle stream is below, courtesy of Desert Storm‘s Bandcamp. The band’s Nov. live dates are in there as well.
Here you go:
Desert Storm, “Salt of the Earth” video premiere
Taken from Desert Storm’s new album Death Rattle, released by APF Records 31st March 2023.
Buy it from: https://apfrecords.co.uk/albums/death-rattle
Video by Graham Bywater
“Salt of the Earth” Recorded and mixed at Woodworm Studios, Oxfordshire UK, between winter of 2021 and summer of 2022 by Steve “Geezer” Watkins.
Mastered in September 2022 by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege, Portland OR, USA.
All music written by Desert Storm. All lyrics writted by Matthew Ryan.
Artwork design by David Paul Seymour. Layout by Dominic Sohor.
Desert Storm UK Tour Dates
23.09.23 | Bristol | The Gryphon
29.09.23 | Hull | Polar Bear Music Club
30.09.23 | Manchester | Riffolution Festival
05.01.24 | Southampton | The Joiners
06.01.24 | London | The Black Heart
07.01.24 | Sheffield | Corporation
23.03.24 | Oxford | Buried In Smoke Festival
Desert Storm is –
Matthew Ryan – Vocals
Ryan Cole – Guitars
Elliot Cole – Drums & Percussion
Matthew Dennett – Bass
