Album Review: Dirtmother, Dirtmother
Posted in Reviews on March 4th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
They don’t make you wait much longer than the four-count into opener “Soil the Dove” before Dirtmother tell you what they’re all about. And even that count-in has feedback behind it. Based in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and counting their origins back to 2006, the four-piece reformed in 2023 after I don’t know how long of a break, and make their self-released debut with the eight songs and 44 minutes of Dirtmother. The tracks are raw to the point of being raw as a point, and across the span, the band — vocalist Tim Stockburger, guitarist Anthony Harvell, bassist Todd Bohannon (ex-Deadbird, Deadeyejack), and drummer Jay Hollingshead (ex-Wrought) — capture the groove and despondent aggression of classic Southern sludge.
Riffs are followed, nods are nodded, screams are screamed, and that explosion as “Soil the Dove” picks up that count is a scouring, lumbering, nasty-ass take on the style, meaner at high volumes but intentionally caustic regardless. I don’t know how long these songs have been around — for a band with 19 years of history releasing their first album, the possibility for vintage riffs grows — but Dirtmother show up with the clear purpose of laying waste and “Plinko” starts with a “shit! fuck!” sample before setting out on its own roll, backing the opener with mid-tempo low-end push as aural torque behind Stockburger growls and higher-register throatrippers, only intermittently intelligable, but in little danger of not making their statement regardless. “Close your eyes…” is repeated in the chorus of “Plinko,” but Dirtmother are less about hooks or accessibility than about pummel, and their energies are thusly directed in songwriting.
Once upon a time, about 20-25 years ago, scores of bands like this wandered the earth. I was in one. The hillsides were painted with them, all pissed off and crashing around about who knows what. Dirtmother‘s Dirtmother doesn’t really feel anachronistic — such as it is, the production is way more 2020s than 2000s, but after a certain point, raw is raw — as longest cut “Goodnight Mommy” (7:53) draws down the pace to emphasize the doomly pulls and rearing-back before the next crushing measure, but it’s a take on sludge that I can only think of as ‘classic’ in my mind, odd as that seems. The way everything stops to let the guitar establish a riff after two minutes into “Goodnight Mommy” and for how the scream starts before they crash back in on that same groove; or the way “None Would Name It” pushes even further into grueling tempo and filthy revelry, a bit of swing arriving for contrast coinciding with a ’00s janga-janga shuffle — the stuff of stoner rock when it was still embarrassed to be called that.
“None Would Name It” feels especially dark in tone, but it moves fluidly even if the band sound like they have knives for teeth. There aren’t going to be a ton of surprises for those who’ve had experience with Southern sludge, but neither should that be taken to mean Dirtmother are aping Eyehategod or anyone else in the sphere. If you look at Dirtmother as a first record from a band who got going in 2023, it’s a fascinating and righteous representation of the style.
The fact that they started in the aughts, and that they highlight that longevity — something that one generally expects from black metal bands, who somehow all formed in 1991 — even with the implication of a break of some years between eras, changes the context. I didn’t see Dirtmother in Arkansas circa 2006, or 2007, or ever, so I can’t speak to how they sounded then vs. how they sound now — I found a clip on YouTube from 2008; way blown out, but consistent in methodology — but as they start the second half of the record with “Bad Ideas All Around,” with Stockburger seeming to open wide and swallow the whole song in the first minute, only to have the riff persist thereafter, it’s a strange thing to feel nostalgic about. Obviously, different listeners will bring themselves to it in their own way.
Growing deathly in its grows, “Bad Ideas All Around” comes to a halt around a sample and feedback at around the halfway point — the use of samples serving as another tie to original-era sludge; think Buzzov*en, Rwake, etc. — and crawls to its finish from there. Nothing on side B hits the seven-minute mark like “Goodnight Mommy,” but there’s little letup just the same. “Beware of God” is likewise harsh and Sabbathian, another sample after the first verse and a slowdown into a lower-growling middle eventually gives back to swing, but keeps the barebones feel of its most methodical crush.
I don’t know what the lyrics are and I’m not sure I want to, but “Reverse Cowgirl” follows suit in its first verse, opening to a chorus that cycles through around crashes and a twist of riff, Stockburger as scathing as he’s yet been on vocals. There’s a slowdown, a speed-up, and even some cleaner shouts in the last minute, so “Reverse Cowgirl” isn’t without its dynamic — it’s the shortest cut at 4:05 — and it ends with push and the repeated line, “Baby, you’ve got no reason to stop..” giving over to a sample at the start of closer “Trucker,” someone in a Southern accent talking about hitting something or someone; it’s pretty vague.
The capper is no less an assault than one would hope. No, Dirtmother haven’t been hiding some too-clever-by-half divergence up their collective sleeve, and they’re not about to take away from the album-as-monolith impression they’ve given throughout while still highlighting different pieces of individual tracks. “Trucker” is a rolling stoner riff, blues-via-Sabbath-via-Southern-Baptist-trauma, and it finishes Dirtmother‘s Dirtmother with six and a half minutes of reaffirmed assault.
They get a little Goatsnakey in the second half, and that’s certainly welcome and suited to Hollingshead‘s drumming, but hit into the inevitable slowdown and there make their final stand. There’s the expected amount of fanfare to cap — i.e. not very much at all; a sample gives over to residual echo as the amps drop to hum and cut to silence — and Dirtmother exit the proceedings with no more pretense than they came in. A band who showed up, wrecked the place, got out. I’d say they don’t make ’em like that anymore, but apparently they do. Sludge on.
