CREDIT: DRY HEAVE
Dry Heave's three-minute demo is definitely worth a listen.

As I write this paragraph, the pummelling assault that is Dry Heave’s second release nears its end. It’s a quick demo – just barely past the three-minute mark – and it holds nothing back in the process.

I recorded the band’s first demo last year in its practice space just months after the band formed, and I was satisfied with the outcome, because Dry Heave is a band that has its shit together.

Recording music is often defined not entirely by the engineer but by the band itself and how they use their equipment. Being an MIA student, one of the most seemingly obvious but often ignored advice is making sure that the source of the sound is good.

If your guitar tone isn’t the best, and the drums aren’t being played well, no amount of processing and editing work is going to be able to fix that entirely.

Dry Heave is a solid group of musicians all performing at their best, and recording them is an enjoyable task.

The band’s music can be described as grindcore with a unique twist on vocals from front-woman Gabie Nestor. Her vocals ride the beat of each song with grace, creating these quirky and effective parts that makes Dry Heave a unique band.

When Dry Heave formed around this time last year, they showed a significant burst of interest in the hardcore scene. One of the best indicators that a scene is alive is when musicians begin to form projects with each other solely for the purpose of having fun.

When you can begin to connect band A to band B to band C and so on, it means that people are creating a network of projects that will play shows with each other and release music together.

You can expect to see familiar faces and in the best-case scenario, the scene becomes a notable stop for touring bands solely because there is something cool happening in the city.

It’s hard to create music with intensity that doesn’t borderline on what other bands have already done. Hardcore and its sub-genres are based off of minimalism so your pool of melodic content isn’t exactly the biggest to play with. You won’t find any 10-minute-long epics or soaring Dio-esque vocals here and that is OK. What hardcore intends to do is not expand in melodic content but to simply bring an abrasive attitude to the stage.

It’s easier said than done, and lots of bands fall short due to not having a tight instrument section or not writing ballsy guitar riffs. I’m sure at some point there has been some similar projects in the world, but Dry Heave themselves are unique in the London scene, and from my own experiences, have captured a lot of people’s attention, because they stick out from their contemporaries.

Each of the members are already a part of other projects, with guitarist James Oag being the vocalist of my band Lapsaria, bassist for Hamilton’s Born Wrong, former member of Icons and was a part of the now defunct Lifeboat. Similarly, the drummer and bassist, Alex Bast and Isaac Owen, are in the band Bike Cop while also being a part of other off-shoot projects in the London area.

Gabie herself is an incredibly talented songwriter and set to release some cohesive solo music by the end of this year.

If you can spare three minutes of your life, check out the band’s demo at dryheaving.bandcamp. com, where you can download it for free along with the aforementioned demo from the year before.