Drugs of Faith
My first question to vocalist/guitarist Richard Johnson: “Is grind ‘n’ roll the wave of the future?” It’s not a stupid question. While this particular mirco-genre may be small, his band Drugs of Faith sound like they could carry a revolution on their hulking shoulders. “I’m certainly known more for grinding than anything else,” Johnson says in a true understatement. Known matter-of-factly as the Grindfather, he was at the helm of East Coast blasting legends Enemy Soil, and is a valuable cog in the deranged drum machinery of Agoraphobic Nosebleed. But his band’s feverishly-desired debut full-length, Corroded, is definitely not going to slake the thirst of insulated grind freaks. Instead, the trio piles on plenty of hazardous rock riffs, deformed hooks and bass/guitar interplay too knotted and inventive to stand next to your normal, everyday blur-core. And this bothers Johnson not a bit. “It just has to be how it is,” he says. “Sometimes we get [classified] as a grindcore band. But it comes down to how many blasts relative to how many minutes of music do you need to be a grind band? Is there a blast quotient? At one point, not even 50 percent of the record had grinding parts on it, and that actually concerned me at first, but it went away after time. I don’t feel like I’m pushing the material. We just try and write really catchy stuff. Plus, who doesn’t like a rock riff?”
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