Bassist/guitarist/singer Dave Curran has long made the rounds of the finest in noise rock bands – though he’s best known for his long tenure in Unsane, he’s also thrummed, thrashed, and throated for the Cutthroats 9, J.J. Paradise Players Club, the Book of Knots, and Pigs, not to mention lending a hand in the efforts of French fellow travelers Sofy Major during his time in that country. Now based in Milano, Italy, Curran’s joined up with a pair of likeminded natives to form Baratro, an ugly power trio now bearing its first album The Sweet Smell of Unrest. Unsurprisingly, the tart apple hasn’t fallen far from the gnarled tree – the combination of sludge metal, hardcore, sheet-metal noise rock, and societal disgust certainly recalls Curran’s prior employers, up to and including the Melvins, for whom Curran has long run live sound. That’s not to say Baratro is derivative, exactly – after all, Curran was there on the ground floor for the evolution of this strain of poison. But you’ll know what to expect, and since the results include the sensual brutality of the raging “Simp,” the grinding “Nervous Wreck,” the crashing “Pay Dirt,” and the doomed “Glutton,” consider those expectations happily fulfilled.
