DEAD ENDEADEN TOTAL (MORT) FEST.

Not cool man, not cool. What-so-ever.

So, we may have never looked at Castlemaine, Australia's Wikipedia page, and that's okay. We think it's a place like Missoula with somewhere far fewer than a hundred thousand human inhabitants, a healthy countercultural vibe, and far enough from a town of any size not to be some boring bedroom community.

And,we do know that before Dead were from there, they were from an unhip zipcode within Melbourne, a town arguably pumping out more groovy crap than anywhere we can really think of. Dead (pronounced "Did," I believe) have got an awesomely unwholesome Motorhead, Karpy kind of vibe, have been a band now for we think a solid five or nearly six years, and this will be their third stateside tour. They've been to two other Total Fests, and their ass-soloing, drum thrashing, whatever it exactly is, always counts as the top end of the highlights reel, which is typically pretty well jam packed already.

Some history: back in something like 2006, a young fellow from Australia began swapping emails, buying Wantage stuff relentlessly, and sending CDRs of his and his friends bands. Jem was then in a great three piece band with two bassists and himself called Fire Witch. We ended up putting out a rager of a 10" for them before they broke up. Hand printed it on leftover Oxes sleeves, in fact. We've always kept in pretty solid touch, and he'd been serious about getting to the U.S., largely to get to meet some of the folks from the bands he loves, but also to share his great tunes. The second half of the group is Jace Rodgers whose bass playing/screaching we'd gotten to know well from one of Jem's vinyl releases (on his label We Empty Rooms), a thoroughly fucking ripping rager of a band called Inappropriate Toughguy Behaviour.

Also not cool. Not cool at all Total Fest. Who do you think you are?

Dead got us their first LP to put out, then did a second one called Idiots with a rad label called Eolian Empire in Portland. All of them have something unique and not just noise rock about them, and that's kind of I think what makes it a step above the rest. The first LP has this track called Prick Rodeo that we still listen to for its biiiiiig, groovy riff that gets repeated beyond ad nauseum to the point of an Oneida or Neu sort of commitment. We thought that took guts, and loved it. And love everything they touch. We put out (with WER) a great 7" they did with Vaz, who were tourmates of theirs in Australia. Okay, it's clear we think. Dead.