DIRTY ROTTEN IMBECILES
Greatest Hits (Deadline Music)
Reviewed by Jason Thornberry

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I'm pretty lucky I already knew these songs by heart, as whoever mastered this disc did so apparently without getting a glimpse at the album sleeve first. If you want to hear a song like Redline you'll get Probation instead:

"They set the rules they want me to break. Take all my money, set me straight. Then they confine me, let me check in. Analyze my piss, ask me where I have been. They'll keep on trying to straighten me out. The more that they try, the more I doubt".

This San Francisco via Texas "metal-core" outfit who thrived in the late eighties have seventeen of the foremost songs from their initial three albums brought back to life here. I'm quite fond of this, and after 1988’s Four of a Kind I was only vaguely interested anyway. I do wish Manifest Destiny, Shut Up, or Suit and Tie Guy made it onto this CD, but after Felix Griffin (drums) departed I think the band was over with. Thrash Zone (1989) had moments, but by that time I had discovered even more frenetic stuff.

D.R.I. were a huge part of my adolescence, and have always been unfairly overlooked by music fans. Not me!

Grade: A

© 2001 - Jason Thornberry