DESCRIPTION:
Speaking of me being an irresponsible dickhead, this group was first shared to me back on May 2nd. Fuck.

This is Dusters, an oi! group hailing from Basement City U.S.A. A.K.A. New Brunswick, New Jersey. That's one lame claim to fame, to have a city with an over-active basement music community. Though I'm probably biased; out here, the only people who have basements are the rich or the weird. Anyways, like I said, Dusters is an oi! group. I typically don't listen to a lot of oi! stuff, but not because I hold anything against it as a subgenre, it's more because of an internal bias. It just all kinda blends together after a while, y'know? I wouldn't dare say it seems generic to me, but it usually doesn't tickle my fancy. I spend half of my time listening to oi! trying to figure out whether or not they're a satirical group because of how many cornerstones all these bands constantly play off of. It's like they've got a checklist of stuff to say and do with their oi! band, with the "chant oi!" box being checked at least a dozen times over.

Thankfully, Dusters doesn't pander to an excessive amount of these checkboxes. Hell, there's only one instance of them chanting oi, and barely have ANY vocal chants until the very last track, which is an Oppressed cover, so I don't count that. I don't even place Dusters on the same oi! pedestal as the others; after all, they do jokingly describe themselves as "the world's only anti-white skinhead oi! band" (Editor's Note [I'm also the editor by the way]: They don't hate white people, it's really just a joke. I'm clearin' the air here so nobody gets fussy). The vocalist also told me about the "soccer hooligan culture" that they're associated with, which is a totally foreign concept to me. Supposedly it's some "counter-cultural" thing that's arising out of punks through Europe, Africa, and Asia, where I guess they just play soccer in an unruly fashion? I'm not totally sure. The song "Derby Days" is written about soccer hooligan culture, with a "derby" being a soccer match between two rival clubs. Like, the vocalist told me that there's a new team across the Hudson River from them called "NYCFC" that's filled with "bonehead neo-nazis" that they're highly against, since they're anti-fascist. That means they gotta play soccer to determine...who's the soccer king? I really don't know. When I was a kid in Southern Cali, I just saw others playing soccer poorly and then beating the shit out of each other afterwards, is that kinda the same thing? Probably not. So now I just imagine New Brunswick to be a desolate Mad Max-esque piece of land where, instead of fighting to the death in the Thunderdome, all of the people's conflicts are settled through an intense game of soccer. In all honesty, the Thunderdome sounds way cooler.

Forget it, I'm clueless. All that matters is that Dusters is actually pretty solid, regardless of what genre they're classified as or how well they play soccer. Being more hardcore-oriented, there aren't an excessive amount of upbeat pogo-friendly jams to hop around to, instead delivering nothing but straight-forward stompers. Just think of their music as "oi! inspired," if anything. The rhythms are still bouncy enough to get your head bobbing, but not light enough to call for anything more than that. I actually enjoy it tons, to my surprise. There's so many gems to be found here, with my personal favorites being "Pig Roast" and "Derby Days". The former because it absolutely crushes, and the latter because the vocal work in that is fantastic. Speaking of which, props to the vocalist. He delivers these menacing, throaty vocals that can both keep up with the blazing tempo, and still somehow manage to sing in the last two tracks. The music is collected and concentrated enough to go straight for the throat, and was capable of wowing me at many points, regardless of how low I set my expectations. All in all, I'm super-glad that Dusters isn't just another throwaway group of bootboys. They do enough to separate themselves from the rest of the oi! bands that I honestly couldn't care less for, which is really all I can ask of them.

TRACK LIST:
Livin' In The Garden State - 0:00
Wolves In A World of Sheep - 1:46
Psycho In The Scene - 3:14
Pig Roast - 4:29
Derby Days - 6:43
Ultraviolence (Oppressed Cover) - 9:00

DOWNLOAD: https://getdusted.bandcamp.com/