[listen] Metz – “Dirty Shirt”

Nov 29, 2012

Hey Metz, what’s up with the cover for your new single? Did you scan a cat? It’s so good. Let me know. Anyway, that feline’s expression will soon be yours after listening to the stream below of “Dirty Shirt,” the incinerating B-side to new single “Leave Me Out.”

My favorite Metz songs are the ones that are imbued with a demented paranoia, like “Rats” and the instrumental “Nausea” from their self-titled debut. Like those two tracks, “Dirty Shirt” uses bended, careening guitar notes to create a complete sense of disorientation and imbalance that feels like getting your inner ear bones shattered in the mosh pit. Every instrument is played like it’s on fire and needs to be extinguished, while the vocals belch acrid smoke through the speakers. Like everything on their debut album, “Dirty Shirt” barrels calamitously like a doomed train, but somehow still hypnotizes us towards its tracks.