Dead to rights Has the Season of metal returned? BY SAM PFEIFLE
	DEAD SEASON Ushuaia, in Orono, with Mushroomhead | Wednesday, Sept 14 | Asylum, in Portland | Friday, Sept 23 | www.deadseasonmusic.com

If you turn on 105.1 WTOS at any given time, you’ve got a good chance of hearing "Kashmir," or maybe "Bawitdaba." Maybe you’ll get ZZ Top, but none of their cool, country-influence older stuff. If you listen long enough, though, you’re also likely to hear "The One," a menacing ditty by a band out of Oxford called Dead Season that’s got people pretty damn excited.

But you’ve heard of Dead Season by now. Whether it’s because you listen to WTOS, whose battle of the bands Dead Season have now won two years in a row, or because you follow our own little "Top 10," where Dead Season have been a constant presence for the past year. This week, actually, you’ll find them right there in the #1 slot with their new EP, The Fight, six songs of smack-you-in-the-face metal.

These four central Maine metalheads have quickly become the feel-good story of the local scene, making a success out of themselves through a combination of hard work, a dedication to their fanbase, and songs that make you want to put your head through a wall. But that’s not all. You’ve got to think they’ve got a little special something, too. Whether it’s charisma, or luck, or divine providence, Dead Season have reached heights unattained by bands with better musicianship, indie-label backing, or a bigger potential fanbase by being in Southern Maine.

"We just have a lot of integrity with what we do," reasons guitarist Matt Truman by way of explaining their somewhat meteoric rise. "We don’t short-change ourselves or anything we do, either. When we write our songs, we don’t keep it around unless we’re happy with every part it. We just have a lot of drive."

They’re neither high-school wunderkinds nor classically trained. In fact, the Trumans (Matt’s brother Ian is lead vocalist) are some of the more successful athletes Maine has recently produced. Matt played baseball for UMaine while studying electrical engineering; Ian was an Academic All-American playing football for Springfield College, in Massachusetts.

"We came into it late," agrees Matt. "My father was real athletic and we were real successful in sports. I didn’t pick up my first guitar until my senior year of high school." That was when Nirvana were at their height and that guitar in Service Merchandise looked particularly attractive to an 18-year-old. Then Matt spent all his graduation money on a Les Paul and started getting his brother to sing Bon Scott’s parts while he practiced AC/DC riffs.

They were hooked. Following college graduation, the brothers were determined to get a band together. An ad in FACE Magazine found them drummer Marty Nadeau, and a post on the Maine Musicians message board found them a bassist who’s now been replaced by Craig Chaisson (though Matt played all the bass parts on the new album). Riffing on influences like Pantera, Mudvayne, and Tool, they started working on some heavy music and doing the whole Maine-band thing. You’ve heard that story a million times.

Things really started taking off, though, with the release of Down Again, an EP Dead Season recorded with Jon Wyman that has flat-out captivated the Maine metal scene. Selling nearly 2000 copies over the course of this past year, it is quite simply unprecedentedly popular for music that is not all that accessible even for people who like their metal heavy. Ian Truman does break into a singing voice for choruses and call-and-response sections, but in large part his delivery is along hardcore/screamo lines, dark and intimidating and nearly unintelligible in its ferocity. Dead Season don’t have the technical precision of bands like Nobis or Vertigod on the local scene, but they have more of a rock mentality, which may allow them to draw from a deeper fanbase. Younger fans, especially, used to Disturbed or System of a Down on active rock radio, are sucked right in.

The Fight finds Dead Season taking leaps forward from Down Again. I’ll let Matt Truman do the explaining: "It’s just a year later, a year of getting to be better musicians. My brother has gone from the point of being a non-singer to being a good metal vocalist; he can scream, but it’s not just screaming, it’s got texture and focus now. I’m a self-taught guitar player, and good songwriting is just coming easier to me . . . [On The Fight] Marty just kept everything locked to a grid. On Down Again there are some unintended tempo changes, just playing with a live feel."

I couldn’t agree more. This record is tight and engaging, with that nervous kind of energy that makes me anxious and gives me the sweats. Check out the way "American Nothing" builds from a narcotic crooning to a flat-out psychotic delivery of "Now you bleed." In the same song they finish with some of that rap-core stuff, which I wouldn’t want to hear much more of, but works well in this small dose. There’s also a good undercurrent of social criticism here — it’s not much beyond the standard disaffected malcontentedness, but it’s still appreciated.

Dead Season finish the album’s last track, "Killing Flies," with a whispered "Wake up" that someone crystallized the whole project for me and should really have a horror flick built around it. Dead Season, with nibbles now from labels and all that good stuff, are really close to living their dreams. In their copasetic nightmare, the worst thing that could happen would be for them to wake up.

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at sam@phx.com