Heavy Song of the Week: Dirty Honey’s “Won’t Take Me

Heavy Song of the Week is a feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal and hard rock tracks you need to hear every Friday. This week the top spot goes to “Won’t Take Me Alive” by Dirty Honey.

The central riff of Dirty Honey’s new single “Won’t Take Me Alive” is the kind that will keep a guitarist up at night. Sometimes the notes come in one flourish of improvisational serendipity; other times, it’s a more gradual, repetitive process. You know it’s a good riff, but something doesn’t sit quite right. So you play it over and over and over, adding and subtracting hammer ons, pull offs, and bends until the riff is as razor sharp as what you’re hearing in your head. Then there’s the task of properly recording said riff and finding the right tone to complement it.

John Notto’s riff on “Won’t Take Me Alive” sure sounds like one of those labored-over, too-good-to-not-perfect-it type of riffs. Perhaps knowing this, Notto and producer Nick DiDia went as far as to rent vintage amps to nail down the “raunchy sound” Notto was aiming for. The result is a rich and vibrant tone that invokes an old ’80s hair metal cassette, back when sleazy rock had big budgets and access to copious analog gear. Dirty Honey singer Marc LaBelle says it’s the best riff he’s heard in a decade, and while that might be a stretch, it certainly grabbed our ear during a relatively light week of listening surrounding the holiday.

Honorable Mentions:

3TEETH – “Scorpion”

3TEETH have gone full theater troupe with their recent singles — “Scorpion” being the latest — melding their cinematic industrial metal with cosplay aesthetics and CGI-filled videos that make the band look like Fallout NPCs. As far as modern industrial metal goes, only Code Orange and Rammstein have dared to attempt such decadence visually as well as sonically.

Carnifex – “Necromanteum”

Carnifex continue to stick to their tried-and-true deathcore sound, but it’s the narrative concept that is the most intriguing element of their latest single “Necromanteum.” To commune with the dead… would you dare? A fine slab of deathcore with appropriately death-centric lyrical content. The Poe-inspired gothic horror vibes suit the band well.

Nita Strauss feat. Marty Friedman – “Surfacing”

Strangely, “Surfacing” is tacked on as a bonus track at the end of Nita Strauss’ just-released solo album The Call of the Void. Featuring dueling axework alongside shred guitar legend Marty Friedman, the track is Strauss’ Cacophony moment — an instrumental that lets her put her skills on display in tandem with one of the all-time greats. Required listening for all the shredder heads out there.

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