Heat Dust - Heat Dust

Label: The Flenser
Year: 2015

Marketed as "nihilistic post punk from NOLA", which, based on context clues, might be deceiving. They may be geographically rooted in New Orleans, but there is no remnant of any sort of NOLA styled swampy Sabbath poaching, so the city tag is a bit misleading.
The nihilism may very well be intended, or implied, but there is no spiteful spewing of venom or anything like that.
The post punk tag, yeah, I'll give them that. It's very post punk, and worth distinguishing that we are saying post punk not post hardcore. Trivial to all who are not nerds, but, needs to be mentioned.
So then, what is this record of not "nihilistic post punk from NOLA"?  I would say they are a very well structured, dark and gloomy, death rock ride. They pull in a lot of Killing Joke and Joy Division to give their songs a tension and overall foreboding aura. Beastmilk did it very successfully, and I think you could draw a fair comparison between the two bands. Royal Thunder do it as well, although they flavor their version with a blues thump that Heat Dust forego (truth be told though, my vision may be obscured by seeing Royal Thunder perform last night), but both bands create a similar mood of dread. Heat Dust also inject needed energy into the album here and there by increasing the tempo and allowing more light to flesh out the tunes ("Seeking a Praxis" for example) which keeps the record from becoming "one note", you know? Those songs remind me a little bit of All The Saints, if that does anything for you.
All in all, I'm really enjoying this one. Chances are you will as well, and no doubt you can certainly find better ways to describe it than I just did.

DL