Dog Fashion Disco - Sweet Nothings (Rotten 2014)

Sweet Nothings is the seventh studio album from the freshly-reunited Maryland metal maestros, Dog Fashion Disco.

If the movie Three Men and a Baby starred George Clinton, Al Jourgensen, and Mike Patton instead of Guttenberg, Selleck, and Danson—that baby would have grown up to become Sweet Nothings. But that doesn't even begin to explain how eclectic this album is. A full detailed description of the audible influences would take much more than the few hundred words I've been allotted, so I'll try to sum it up like this:

It's a rich layer cake of prog/math rock, jazz, industrial metal, ska, and funk, covered with a thick icing of distortion, and decorated with Hammond organs and horn sections. Great, now I'm hungry for cake...

The genre-bending madness may be enough to frustrate or just plain bowl over many casual listeners, but Dog Fashion Disco's bizarre musical melange is what makes them so endearing to long-time fans. If you're lucky enough to develop an ear for their sound, Sweet Nothings is far from disappointing. It also has one of the raddest damn album covers I've ever seen.
 
From the smoky-lounge jazz of "Greta", to the disco funk of "Doctor's Orders", through the Tool-reminiscent "Approach and Recede", and wrapping up magnificently with the catchy roots-turned-reggae-turned-jazz-turned-sludge metal track aptly named "End of the Road", Sweet Nothings offers an aural roller coaster which must be heard to be believed.