Dust – Dust and Hard Attack
Legacy Recordings
www.legacyrecordings.com

Rating: B+

Born in Brooklyn, New York in the late 1960’s, Dust were a pro-type Heavy Metal band made up of three musicians and a lyrist that all went on to have major careers in rock and roll.  Dust could actually be called a pre-super group as the band consisted of the two guys who went on to produce the first two Kiss albums, guitarist/vocalist Richie Wise and manager/lyricist Kenny Kerner, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer Marc Bell, AKA Marky Ramone, and bassist extraordinaire Kenny Aaronson who went on to play with Bob Dylan, Sammy Hagar and Joan Jett among others.  

Before they were famous, they were Dust, however, a band of kids who were, accidentally and in some ways unbeknownst to them, creating American Heavy Metal.  They only released two albums, 1971’s self-titled debut, and 1972’s Hard Attack before breaking up.  Now, both albums  have been re-released and remastered from the original analog master tapes on a single CD with a Record Store Day exclusive vinyl version released on April 20. 

"We were loud and fast, and it was just unreal," recalls Wise. "Even when we played low, we were 20 times louder than everybody else. When we got our record deal, I got three Marshall stacks, Kenny Aaronson bought four Acoustic 360-watt amps, Marc bought this huge set of Ludwigs with a big 28-inch bass drum. On stage, it was just an amazing amount of exhale — not a whole lot of inhale." 

The self-titled Dust album featured a song that is considered one of the first and finest examples of early American Heavy Metal in “From a Dry Camel.”  That album also contains rockers “Stone Woman,” “Chasin’ Ladies” and “Loose Goose.”  Hard Attack saw Dust write the best hard rock songs of their brief career, stepping up the musicianship, yet also performing songs outside of the Metal genre including “Thusly Spoken” and “How Many Horses.”  It is the powerhouse tunes on Hard Attach, though, that make this album so special.  “Suicide” has been a cult favorite for years while “Learning to Die” and “Pull Away/So Many Times” see Dust creating their own individual sound.  Pretty amazing considering they were all 21 years of age or younger at the time! 

Marky Ramone AKA Marc Bell comments, "We were teenagers, but we were pretty developed as musicians — concerning that genre. Nobody else in Brooklyn that I knew of could do what we could do as a threesome. And we had a style. Yeah, we could all play blues and rock, but we took it further. We took it to different time changes within the songs, and people weren't doing that at that time." 

Both albums sound amazing as the songs, after being remastered, literally rock harder than ever before and have had new life breathed into them.  "We tweaked it a bit," points out Aaronson. "But didn't want to stray too far from the original, because that's what people who do know it are used to. If it was up to me, I was thinking, 'I wish I could remix the whole record,' but the remastering was nice." 

The final word on Dust goes to manager and lyricist Kenny Kerner, who is thrilled the band’s two albums will once again see the light of day.  "I think young kids who never heard it before will find new Metal heroes, and people who grew up with Dust will rekindle their love for this music and this band." 

Tracklisting: 

Hard Attack:
Pull Away/So Many Times
Walk in the Soft Rain
Thusly Spoken
Learning to Die
All in All
I Been Thinkin’
Ivory
How Many Horses
Suicide
Entrance

Dust:
Stone Woman
Chasin’ Ladies
Goin’ Easy
Love Me Hard
From a Dry Camel
Often Shadows Fall
Loose Goose 

By Jeb Wright