Dere Moans – Doom Royale
3.9.18 by Ryan Masteller

I’m going to be honest with you guys – if I wanted a “blistering torrent of early 2000s nü-metal/death metal samples juxtaposed with 80s/90s pop,” I could’ve just stuck my head in an industrial-sized blender. Because I actually don’t want it. Never did. I could get the exact same effect, probably, from doing the blender thing. Sure, I had nü-metal streak, I went to public high school, but man, that is one segment (now purged) of my record collection that I never want to go back to.

Still, Dere Moans… you intrigue me, you whippersnapper, you. What does the answer to the question (more an exclamation) “You only listen to ONE heavy metal song at a time?” sound like? (By the way, thanks for that great perspective, Houdini Mansions, I wish I’da thunk it.) I have no idea, and as terrible an idea as finding out might be … let’s frickin’ find out! The Minnesota producer, fortunately, doesn’t follow the lead of a project like Splice Girls, where the samples are really obvious and the result aligns more with pastiche (and I enjoyed “Spliceworld,” don’t get me wrong). Nope, on “Doom Royale,” I can’t pinpoint a single song. This realization – that I wasn’t THAT deep into the macho nü-metal quagmire – ends up doing more for my sense of self-worth than I had any right to expect from Dere Moans so… bravo, sir?

The repurposed metal samples clang and bash against the insides of speakers like electrons with roid rage, revving their motors and spinning their wheels in the sand until smoke begins to pour out of the engine block. And just to throw another metaphorical log into the stew, the snippets glitch out like Max Headroom in paroxysms of wordless Tourette’s. You guys remember Max Headroom? God, I’m old. But I had you at “glitch” and “wordless Tourette’s,” didn’t I?

So what DOES it sound like? Noise? …Sort of. Industrial? …Maybe. “Digital hardcore”? …Um. Nü-metal? …Oh, guys, this is so hard. It’s certainly nothing if not a brain scrambler. Give it a spin and buy a copy if you like it. Only 20 available from Bad Cake Records…