Exclusive Track Premiere: Dendritic Arbor’s “Snake Oil”

This past summer, the editors of MetalSucks hand-picked ten unsigned bands from an open application process to record at Converse Rubber Tracks — Converse’s completely free, state-of-the-art recording studio — in either Brooklyn, NY with producer Will Putney (The Acacia Strain, Suicide Silence, Exhumed), or Boston, MA, with producer Kurt Ballou (Converge, High on Fire, Torche). In the weeks leading up to the recording sessions, we previewed each band, and in the coming weeks we’ll be premiering the finished tracks from all ten! Today, we feature Dendritic Arbor from Pennsylvania.

Anyone who claims that metal, as a genre, is stuck in a creative rut hasn’t heard Dendritic Arbor. Earlier this year, the band’s album Romantic Love provided both grindcore and black metal with a swift kick in the pants; now the song “Snake Oil,” recorded at CRT Boston with Kurt Ballou, proves that Romantic Love was no fluke. Dendritic Arbor are the real deal; they don’t push the envelope, they shove it to the floor and kick it while it’s down.

As is the case with any great piece of outsider art, “Snake Oil” won’t be for everybody. The work of Dendritic Arbor isn’t an acquired taste — it either speaks to you or it doesn’t. But for those of us to whom it does speak, “Snake Oil” is like screaming into the abyss and having it scream back at you: mesmerizing, horrifying, unbelievable. Dendritic Arbor’s music ain’t no snake oil.