Dutch Schultz is a Belfast band that first appeared on No Echo back in 2018 thanks to a write-up from Therapy? bassist Michael McKeegan. The group's sound is both melodic and riff-driven, bringing to mind '90s post-hardcore and alt.rock radio of that era. "Dutch Schultz grew from the ashes of my previous band Throat, which biggest success was touring America with Clutch and Mastodon," vocalist/guitarist Willy Mundell tells No Echo. "I'm rubbish at describing the bands sound, we're very riffy, I think we're probably a mash up of something like Queens of the Stone Age, Quicksand, and Helmet.
"The group's highlights to date include playing the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Tennents Vital Festival, and supporting Therapy?. We've gone through a few lineup changes to the point of recording the latest album, in a sense this album is pretty much a brand new band."
That "album" Willy's referring to is Dutch Schultz's third full-length, Friends Like Brutus, which will be out in September. Take a listen to the track "Brutus" below to get an idea of what the group is about:
Willy gets a bit into the inspiration behind the material on Friends Like Brutus: "A lot of the lyrics for the new album are made-up characters or stories, maybe based on a recent experience when words needed to be written. With the song 'Brutus,' I'd been driving a crappy car and was cursing my mate who sold it to me.
"I'd started singing 'hey Judas' but changed it to 'Brutus' and continued from there writing about this fictional Brutus who enjoys nothing better than screwing people over, but I didn't include the car sale bit [laughs].I promise I'm over it!"
Willy offers his thoughts on Dutch Schultz's local music scene: "We're all from Belfast or the surrounding Belfast area, and the band is pretty well-received locally. I think the local scene has seen healthier days, certainly as far as guitar bands or groups go. I reckon this is the case everywhere, though.
"I've a theory that there's too many young musicians sitting in bedrooms making music on their own. They have all they need on laptops to program beats, add synths guitars, etc. But they're doing it in isolation, which might work for the odd genius, but you learn so much from playing with other musicians and people.
"Seems to me there are a lot of rising solo artists on big labels these days and the majority of them are piss poor, so there's nothing really exciting or original making it to the mainstream, which is bad."
Friends Like Brutus will be out on September 18th and can be pre-ordered on Bandcamp today.
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Tagged: dutch schultz
