Dirty Rose – Pestilence and Revelations CD review

Dirty Rose is a straight up hard rock band from West Lothian. Their groovy guitar riffs, punchy choruses and towering vocal lines, form a wall of sonic power that will knock you off your feet the moment the first track kicks in. This is Dirty Rose’s first EP entitled, Pestilence and Revelations -( a 3 track demo was released in 2010, also reviewed on Planetmosh HERE ) a six track CD that has some really powerful and memorable parts to it. Although they may not push the boat out with their music, but as the saying goes if it isn’t broken don’t fix it. Dirty Rose knows how to rock, and seen as this is only their first release, we can let them off for the lack of originality and ideas on Pestilence and Revelations.

There are some real BEEFY guitar riffs on this EP, and it’s these parts that drive the album forward. It’s really weird because Dirty Rose only have one guitar player in the form of Craig Murray, who actually makes songs like ‘Bite the Hand that Feeds’, ‘Living Societies Disease’ and ‘Time For Change’, sound like a galloping NWOBHM guitar trio. The tone and punch of the riffs through the pummelling distortion on this album really makes the songs all the more heavy, not to mention enjoyable.

The production and mastering of Pestilence and Revelations is brilliant for such a small and relatively unknown band. An album always sounds better when the band have bothered to pay that little bit extra money and time into making their songs sound as massive and epic as possible. Tracks like the speedy ‘Another Day’, the power chord driven ‘Sorrows End’ and the driving melody of ‘Straight from Hell’ all sound a hell of a lot better with a clean cut production, meaning bands should take a leaf out of Dirty Rose’s book when it comes to producing an EP.

There are moments on this album that sound very similar to others. Although these tracks can be great at points, it is a shame that Dirty Rose didn’t have a lot of ideas when it came to writing the songs on Pestilence and Revelations. What sounds the same on the album is that in most of the songs the guitar riffs sound very similar. They are all power chord laden, generally sticking around the same chord progressions and although they are balls out heavy, two much off something good can ruin it. Hopefully with their next album Dirty Rose will try to experiment with their sound and try something different with album number two.

For £3, it is a decent album to have in your collection, but for anymore than this, I’d stick to nicking it off of your friend if they have a copy.  If Dirty Rose where to add a bit more diversity and difference to their music then Pestilence and Revelations would make an impression, for as it stands at the moment it’s just a collection of heavy songs that you can bang you head to. [6/10]