Band of the Week: Dead Confederate

Hometown: Athens, Ga.

Fun Fact: The band recorded its debut album in a compact, claustrophobic concrete box of a room in the same Austin, Texas studio where the sound effects for the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre were recorded.

Why It's Worth Watching: Epic hooks, rollicking guitars, febrile swells and tortured lyrics soaked in anger all coalesce into post-modern rock that places the emphasis back on rock.

For Fans Of: Nirvana, Sonic Youth, My Morning Jacket

Perhaps it's the fiery drawl and breathy croaks of frontman Hardy Morris. Maybe it's the painstaking, angst-ridden lyrics. It could be the boisterous jolts of the guitars and drums. Whatever it is, Dead Confederate has been drawing comparisons to Nirvana.

The Athens, Ga.-based quintet's brand of sullen, knife-edge rock bleeds pure rock 'n' roll, all comparisons to Kurt Cobain aside. When asked how he describes his band's sound, Morris fires off a litany of adjectives: Dark. Alive. Honest. Psychedelic. Loud. "I wanted it to sound like we were crawling all over each other," Morris says of his band's debut album, Wrecking Ball, and it's an apt descriptor.

Born out of the ashes of the Red Belly Band—a previous venture that created songs for no other reason than to jam—Morris says Dead Confederate represents a new beginning for its members. "We graduated from school and thought, do we do music or move on? Around that time, we had written some new songs that I thought were special. We decided to get the new moniker and really take it seriously. That's where Dead Confederate spawned from—that decision to actually pursue music instead of just enjoying it."

Morris splits writing duties with bassist Brantley Senn. It isn't a stretch of the imagination to say each of the band's songs have a bit of a morose edge to them, lyrically. In the slow-burn lead single "The Rat," there are several different allusions to death. "People have asked us, 'why so gloomy, why so dark?'" Morris says. "All of our songs are based on personal experience, and if it's an experience that we're actually writing about, it is probably negative." 

As evidenced by its recent stint on the Conan O'Brien show, Dead Confederate brings the gusto live. Toward the tail end of "The Rat," guitarist Walker Howle had his feet kicked right out from under him. "On like the last chord of the song, Walker flipped over backwards over that monitor," Morris says, laughing. "When we got done, they were like 'Did you do that on purpose?!'  We're like 'No...' and they said, 'Awesome, Pete Townshend shit! We needed that; we haven't had a band rock on here in six months.'"

Listen to Dead Confederate's "The Rat" from Wrecking Ball: