Tremonti Dust – (Album Review)

The band Tremonti‘s new release, Dust, is the second part of an ambitious double album project that started ten months ago with the release of Cauterize. The sister albums are a result of an extremely futile writing period Mark Tremonti had. After it was all said and done he realized that he had too much quality material to try to stuff into one album. For my tastes, the two separate album concept makes much better sense. Instead of an 80-minute epic album with 17 or 18 songs, we are given two ten song albums roughing out to 45 minutes a piece. This format makes the music much easier to digest and enjoy. It also allows the artist to separate similar styled songs between the two albums allowing the sequencing to keep the albums fresh and interesting. A job well done on both albums I might add.

Dust opens up with the heavy “My Last Mistake”, and then leads to the catchy riff of “The Cage”. The latter goes into a little different territory, and it works well. You get hit again with the heavy “Once Dead” which leads into my favorite song the title track, “Dust”. The broody mid-tempo track with acoustic accents also has a great emotional vocal. The song really shows Mark Tremonti‘s growth as a singer. Back with the fast and heavy “Betray Me” after which comes the mid-tempo track “Tore My Heart Out”. This song proves how heavy you can get without a fast, pounding beat, another highlight track. “Catching Fire” is another good track that balances heaviness and melody. Both “Never Wrong”‘ and “Rising Storm” are quality rock songs with the latter being more of an all out heavy metal/trash affair. The album closes with the tasteful, almost ballad-like “Unable to See”.

As with any Tremonti album you get quality musicianship from the rest of the band that includes rhythm guitarist Eric Friedman, bassist Wolfgang Van Halen, and the fantastic drumming of Garrett Whitlock. For me, Dust shows a lot of growth for the band and I like it slightly better than Cauterize. Overall if every song was worth one point I would get this album a 8 out of 10.

BUY: Dust