“If Dirt Buyer II, the forthcoming album from Joe Sutkowski’s Dirt Buyer project on Bayonet Records, offers a clear message,” we wrote in a preview back in August, “it is that of survival.” With Tristan Allen (bass) and Mike Costa (drums) helping to push the sound into heavier territory than previous releases, the record finds Dirt Buyer contemplating the transient nature of things, be it grieving losses not yet realised or celebrating the people and places which hold importance. Because, as we continued, “any true acknowledgement of being alive can only come from brushes with mortality, and the songs see Dirt Buyer engage with the full darkness of the past in order to more fully appreciate the brighter future.”
As latest single ‘Gathering Logs’ shows, the result is at once shadowed and soaring. Unapologetically emo at heart, Sutkowksi draws on the incandescent melodrama of My Chemical Romance and Muse to create rising songs where the stewing darkness can be transcended. Here the moment occurs in the final minute, the track ramping up towards its conclusion and ending with an unbound catharsis. “This is all a living chronicle of all I want to do, which is feel good and be happy,” Sutkowksi explains of the album. “I’m a completely different person now—a better version of myself.”
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Watch the video directed by Luke LeCount below:
Dirt Buyer II is out on the 20th October via Bayonet Records and you can pre-order it now.
