The Drip brings grind to Bend

Published 10:49 am Friday, August 22, 2014

The latest and — I won’t say greatest, but close to it — show in Central Oregon’s summer surge of heavy live music happens Monday night when Washington grind upstarts The Drip roll into Third Street Pub.

Based in Richland, The Drip has been together for a few years, but got a prestigious stamp of approval in March when they signed with arguably the world’s best metal label, Relapse Records.

In April, that new relationship produced the “A Presentation of Gruesome Poetics” EP, a six-song slab of unrelenting brutality: crushing blast beats, serrated guitars, disconcerting shrieks and growls. The Drip doesn’t mess around with experimentation or genre-hopping; this is classic grindcore, just up the family tree from Napalm Death, Brutal Truth and Nasum. You can hear the whole thing at www.thedrip.bandcamp.com.

On Monday, they’ll stop in Bend on their way home from Denver Black Sky, an extreme-music festival put on by Relapse and Denver’s metal-loving brewery, Black Sky Brewing. Hear that, Bend breweries? A Denver brewery puts on a metal festival! I’m just saying.

The Drip, with Death Agenda, E.F.A., Existential Depression and Hog’s Breath; 9 p.m. Monday; free; Third Street Pub, 314 SE Third Street, Bend; www.m-o-m-p.blogspot.com or 541-306-3017.

— Ben Salmon