Dealing With It

D.R.I. | Format: Audio Cassette

Product Details

• Audio Cassette (July 8, 1991)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Rotten
• ASIN: B0000017C5
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #705,135 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Snap

2. I'd Rather Be Sleeping

3. Marriage

4. Yes Ma'am

5. Soup Kitchen

6. Mad Man

7. Stupid, Stupid War

8. Couch Slouch

9. God Is Broke

10. Karma

11. Nursing Home Blues

12. I Don't Need Society

13. Give My Taxes Back

14. The Explorer

15. Reagonomics

16. How to Act

17. Shame

18. Argument Then War

19. Evil Minds

20. Busted Again

See all 23 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

Daniel / Deep Fried Bonanza

"Songs are fast as hell, production is crisp and mean and pretty much every single song is an utter classic."

"One of the greatest and most influential hardcore albums of all time,NO QUESTION WHATSOEVER THAT YOU MUST GO BUY IT!"

"Another killer D.R.I. reissue from Beer City with shitloads of bonus material.This is the way reissues should be done."

Product Description

Vinyl LP repressing of the 1985 sophomore album from the Punk metalheads. Where do you go and what do you do when you achieve near legendary status with your debut album? In D.R.I.'s world, you release Dealing With It, a record that infused their increasing technicality with a love of Metal and the raw, fast as hell Hardcore sound that they patented. Surpassing their debut was never going to be easy, but with this album, D.R.I. managed to do just that in a maelstrom of vicious, catchy, cerebral Hardcore and Metal. --This text refers to the Vinyl edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Incredible" -Dave Lombardo. -One of the best Thrash albums ever!, September 1, 2005

By 

Zander Haberstaft (Miami, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dealing With It (Audio CD)

It is hard to think it has already been twenty years since this album came out but when this came out in the Summer of 1985 (around July) it made quite the splash. I still have the original vinyl record that has the sticker on it with the above quote from Dave Lombardo, an early supporter of D.R.I. and this album came out a couple months before "Hell Awaits" and before S.O.D.'s "Speak English or Die". This review is long, but that is the least this album deserves.

But my do times change. Most people today either don't know or have some distain for D.R.I. Just shows you how foolish the kids who run the scene are these days. But without this band who influenced (directly or indirectly) legions of other bands, where would we be? Thrash would sound like Judas Priest on steroids. We also wouldn't have Death Metal or Grindcore. Want names of the influenced? How about Kreator, Dark Angel, Slayer (of course), S.O.D., Nuclear Assault, Vio-lence, Cryptic Slaughter, Hirax, even Napalm Death, to name just of few in the D.R.I. mold.

What "Dealing with It" represents is a slight transition from their previous 1983 effort titled "The Dirty Rotten LP". That album earned them the title of "Fastest band in the world" which was totally true for years afterword despite what one reviewer thinks of a bad MA band that wasn't faster. That '83 LP is as good as this one but has one major difference, the song writing isn't as good as it is on "Dealing With It". The '83 LP goes from sludgy slow to insanely fast almost effortlessy. That idea is preserved here but the transitions in speed aren't as drastic. In '84 we had the "Violent Pacification" EP with heavier sounds guitars and a lot of palm muting. "Dealing With It" takes all these ideas a step further by remaking some of the old songs with heavy double-bass parts, sludgier guitars and thunderous bass lines, and all of this is kept together by the most inoffensive/atonal vocalist in the genre: Kurt Brecht. The songs on this album have so much range that it makes it quite easy to listen to start to finish. There are the hardcore inspired anthems like "I'd Rather be Sleeping" to the longer songs like the classic chugga-chugga rant "Nursing Home Blues".

Spike Cassidy does a marvelous job on the guitars, the bass is sometimes good sometimes bad but this was because Josh Pappe was in rehab for a drug problem so Cassidy and Mikey Offender had to record the bass lines. The vocals are Dirty...Rotten...and therefore good. The drumming is excellent and while I liked Eric Brecht, the first drummer who would go on to play with Hirax and later with Chuck Schuldiner's band Death, Felix Griffin does a marvelous job. On some of the songs his drumming is better than others, but on the tracks where he wrote the drum lines they are awesome. While people drool over Lombardo, Hoglan, Benante, and Bostaph, Griffin is an underrated drummer. From a drummer's perspective, compared to what other people were doing at the time, in between the bashing of the cymbals and the blast beats he plays some interesting swing and jazz lines occasionally on the ride, and triplets and accents on the bass drums. He was ahead of his time, and frankly one of my favorite drummers from this genre.

The only draw back to this album is the production is terrible. They didn't command too much of a budget in those days so the album sounds very very raw. Sometimes you can't even hear the bass drum at all or the snare. This needs to have a 24-bit digital remastering.

This is a good place to start with the D.R.I. catalogue and while I like their earlier and later stuff up 'til 'Definition', this remains the undisputed classic of their catalogue. The best thing about D.R.I. is you can still see them live for like $10. Can't say the same of Megadeth, Slayer or Anthrax. 5,000,000 stars...if that was possible.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top Notch Hardcore-Thrash, March 17, 2005

By 

Ernesto Catalan Valdez "There is no try..." (Guadalajara, Jalisco Mexico) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dealing With It (Audio CD)

When D.R.I.'s "Dealing With It" came out in 1985, very few people within the metal community have ever heard of them. Some of their early champions, after all, were metalheads, like SLAYER's Dave Lombardo. So, after hearing such praise from some of Thrash Metal's most respected drummers, I proceeded to buy the album. Boy, was I in for a RIDE! This had to be the fastest, dirtiest album I have EVER heard up to that point. It wasn't necessarily "heavy" (although, it actually is, compared to what's being paraded as 'punk' these days!), but it sounds, even to this day, mercilessly FAST....and CATCHY! Yep, the songs, no matter how fast they are, stick in your head: "I Don't Need Society", "Snap", "Marriage", Reaganomics, "Mad Man", Couch Slouch", "Equal People"...the song list goes on (the album has 25 songs! A true 'rarity' at the time!). The production is actually quite clear; you can hear every instrument...it's not just a blast noise. The drumming of Felix is beyond human. Few HC drummers had this manic flair for lightning fast rolls played with surgical precision. The vocals of Kurt Brecht must have been the FASTEST ever. Not even grindcore kings NAPALM DEATH sang THIS fast! Their lyrics were just a blur, while D.R.I.'s lyrics can actually be followed, albeit, at unbelievable speeds. The guitar sounds of Spike are predating the hardcore-metal crossover. D.R.I. were one of the original crossover bands (bands that mixed punk and metal alike), although most of "Dealing With It" resides in the "punk" side of things. It wasn't until the next album (the aptly titled, "Crossover") that the band embraced the metal sound dearly. "Dealing With It" must be seen as a milestone for the punk genre. It's an album that shows an evolutory stage within the punk genre and succeeds at it. If you really wish to hear what a true CROSSOVER band sounds like, then THIS is the album you've been waiting to hear!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars hands down, the best thrash record ever recorded., August 24, 2005

By 

Frank Saponare "fcs3" (Detroit, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dealing With It (Audio CD)

This record is basically a rehashed DIRTY ROTTEN ep (with a few new tricks, and new songs to match). The change the band, and the rerecorded songs, went under within a period of 3 years is mind-blowing and dwarfs their previous studio efforts (not to mention any effort they would make in the future).

DRep was the fastest hardcore record released in its time frame (yes, i'm aware of The Neos, Siege, Koro, Negative FX, Mob47 and anything you could throw at me) but DEALING WITH IT is angrier, tighter, and just plain better...plus, you can see that they've finally learned how to play. They kept it short, sweet, and used the heavy shreds as a garnish rather then a main ingredient (which they should have kept doing).

When I think of THRASH, I think of this record before I think of the crossover acts of the mid/late 80s (dri included) and before I think of the classics that paved the way. DRI is the flagship thrash unit and DEALING WITH IT is the best record of the genre.

easily in the top ten greatest hardcore records ever released.