Photo by Joey Wharton
“We all love a good hook, and there are many great bands that can consistently deliver them. But without a strong sense of orchestration, hook-rich songs can feel kind of ‘blocky’. There is nothing tying them together, no journey, and this is often where a lot of the hook-slinging kingpins can fall short. Avant-jazz-math-fusion stalwarts Dumb Waiter have solved this problem quite effectively. They appear to have dug up John Zorn‘s sense of mercurial and cacophonous jazz and inserted it nicely within a suite of coherent juicy riffs.”
Dumb Waiter is an American avant-jazz rock band formed in late 2012 in Richmond, VA who write a melodic amalgam of math rock, jazz, metal, and punk. The band is comprised of four members who have varying levels of musical education, but have achieved a high level of technical proficiency on their respective instruments. Together they blend a love for heavily distorted tones, melodic complexity, volatile energy, and augmented chord shapes to create “Dumb Waiter”. Thumping blast beats and effected bass grooves lay the bottom layer over which spiraling guitar work and free-wheeling sax noises progress and thrive.