Tag: deaf rhino

New Jersey bro rock band Deaf Rhino has released their debut LP Dirt, Rust, Chaos. If you’re an east-coaster, you may have caught them at Arlene’s Grocery or Webster Hall sharing bills with bands like The Ataris and Teenage Kicks. I say bro rock, but I mean inclusive bro rock with a little soul you can dance to, not self-masturbatory bro rock like Creed or Nickelback who ruined radio and were single-handedly responsible for every teen suicide when I was in high school. (Okay, maybe not, but radio is still trying to recover.) Also, unlike Creed or Nickelback, Deaf Rhino is rambunctious, they kick any moral authority to the curb, and they like to have fun. Rhino’s definitely the first likable bro rock band ever, or at least the first likable bro band since, like, Metallica (even though I don’t like them), and on par with mainstream acts like Queens of the Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys, and Eagles of Death Metal. An Ernest-Hemingway-staring-down-the-double-barrel- of-a-shotgun-at-a-charging-Rhino analogy is in there somewhere, but evoking Hemingway in any sense isn’t something I do lightly. Dirt, Rust, Chaos oscillates between whimsical and agro. There’s as much distortion as there is emotion, and it demonstrates Deaf