Crossover thrash legends D.R.I. bring the noise to Tin Roof on Sept. 18
from Staff Reports
For nearly a decade and a half, Tin Roof, the small dive bar housed in what used to be a tackle shop, has been West Ashley’s biggest champion of live music. It has welcomed bands of every genre imaginable. This month, they’re welcoming crossover thrash royalty when the Dirty Rotten Imbeciles (D.R.I.) grace the Tin Roof stage. For those unfamiliar with crossover thrash, it’s a style that combines punk, hardcore, and metal. This genre invites a mixed audience of punks and metal fans to their shows, who are prone to things like stage diving and slam dancing. D.R.I. is one of the pioneers of the thrash crossover and have been shredding for more than 40 years.
D.R.I.’s history began around 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 2, 1982 in the city of Houston, Texas. It was on this day that the musically-aggressive quartet we now know as D.R.I. made their first dirty rotten noise and called it a song. In November of that year, D.R.I. recorded their first official release, The Dirty Rotten EP, stuffing 22 songs into 18 minutes on a 7-inch EP that played at 33 RPMs. Only 1,000 copies of this version of Dirty Rotten EP were pressed, making it now a very rare collector’s item for fans of the band and punk music. Demand caused the EP to be pressed into a 12” LP version, released the following year, appropriately called Dirty Rotten LP. Leaving the underground music scene thriving for more, Dirty Rotten LP became a major success and also an Inspiration for many new bands at the time. Soon after D.R.I. was labeled the “fastest band in the world.”
In 1983 D.R.I. moved to San Francisco, where they lived in their van and ate at soup kitchens between gigs. D.R.I. found themselves on the “Rock Against Reagan” tour along with punk icons the Dead Kennedy’s. Their next release came out the following year and was scaled back from 22 songs to four-song, entitled Violent Pacification.
D.R.I.’s second full-length release, Dealing With It, came in March 1985. The group toured extensively in support of the album. The songs pointed slightly towards a metal direction, but still remained very hardcore. By this point, the band has gained a real cult status, supported by such fans as Dave Lombardo of Slayer, who told the whole world he was influenced by D.R.I.
The band’s third album came out in 1987, entitled Crossover. The album was aptly named since the songs on it had a strong metal sound to them. As the band began to “crossover” to thrash, their songs became longer, slower, and more complex. D.R.I. was described in the music press as the major band of the “crossover” movement.
The ‘Live at the Ritz’ video was recorded in 1987 at The Ritz hotel in New York City, during the band’s worldwide Crossover tour. Also that year, one of their songs, “Snap” appeared on the International P.E.A.C.E. Benefit Compilation, along with more than 50 other hardcore punk bands, including Dead Kennedys, Crass, Subhumans, and Butthole Surfers.
In February of 1988, the D.R.I. returned to the studio again, this time to record Four Of A Kind. The songs had even more of a metal sound to them. They even released a music video for the song “Suit and Tie Guy.” The following year brought the release of Thrash Zone. Two music videos were released from this album. One for ‘Beneath the Wheel’ and the other for ‘Abduction’.
During the spring of 1992, the album Definition was released and a music video was released for the song “Acid Rain,” which later appeared on an episode of MTV’s Beavis and Butthead.
In 1995, D.R.I. released the album Full Speed Ahead. Then for the next two decades D.R.I. toured around the world. At the end of 2015 D.R.I. went back into the recording studio and recorded its first studio produced songs in two decades. The long awaited But Wait There’s More was released in June of 2016, and D.R.I. once again toured internationally in support of the album.
For the past 40 years, D.R.I. has been the epitome of the aggressive, hardcore-punk, thrash metal sound that is a trademark of the band. Throughout this time, they’ve been one of the few genuine underground bands to remain true to their pure punk roots. Still actively touring and recording, the only thing that may have changed is that they’re a little older now, but time hasn’t gotten the best of the Dirty Rotten Imbeciles. They’re still thrashing just as hard, and just as loud as ever.
D.R.I. will play Sunday, Sept. 18 at the a Tin Roof, located at 1117 Magnolia Road. For more information, call (843) 571-0775 or visit www.charlestontinroof.com.
