The Dead Pool Society is a group united in its admiration for San Antonio death-metal warhorse Dead Pool. This week, the Society is surely exultant over the release of Idle Hands, Dead Pool’s followup to 2003’s Espiritus Muertos, and only the band’s third CD since it formed nine years ago.
If these guys take their sweet time between recording projects, it might be because they leave some serious blood on the tracks. Their dark, cathartic, buzzsaw brand of metal feels like an exorcism performed at 180 beats per minute. Brothers Carlos (guitar) and Michael (bass) Lopez lock into Pantera-inspired grooves, while Chris Wolfe is a manic storm system behind the drum kit. Gordon Ireland’s bowels-of-hell growls suggest the sound of Beelzebub puking on pitch.
On Idle Hands, Ireland’s lyrics focus on witches’ brews, dark clouds, and various monkeys that refuse to get off his back. This chorus from “Balls Deep” is about as sentimental as Dead Pool gets: “This shit’s getting hairy/ I just can’t see/ how the hell I got balls deep.”
Dead Pool’s fans have their chance to get balls deep with the band at an all-ages CD-release gig on Saturday, August 18 at Bonds 007 (450 Soledad St.). Admission is $5 and showtime is 8:30 p.m.
