Location: San Antonio, Texas
Country: USA
Genre: Death/thrash metal
EP: Cursed Masters
Format: Digital album
Label: Independent
Release date: March 31, 2025
After years of waiting, Dirigiri's new EP "Cursed Masters" is finally out to bulldoze all in its path in their home state of Texas and beyond. The wait was a time of preparation to create an EP with the energy and creativity to do just that. Such is the dedication by which the EP was written, how seriously those involved were in playing it and shaping it for release on it, people already perceive it as something that could easily demolish anything and everything.
When I interviewed guitarist Gene Olivarri in 2023, he mentioned what he called Texas death/thrash, or the Lone Star State style, something uniquely aggressive and brutal combining different metal subgenres with groove-based hooks, under a wall of sound. Although they’ve been silent since 2012, Olivarri worked hard to set Dirigiri apart from New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Florida bands. Their sound balanced guttural and high pitched vocals, crunch and tremolo picking, blues and proto thrash vibes in the solos, distorted bass and gratuitous tempo shifts in the drums.
All this had taut production with a near-industrial metal sound similar to Diabolos Rising and Raism, or Impaled Nazarene's occasional industrial experiments. While the traditional rumble, high energy and unrelenting blast remained, their use of tremolo notes and breakdowns defied songwriting convention. Instead of alterations in tone there was a steady consistency making the tracks more linear and aggressive, distinguishing them farther from typical thrash and death metal.
On "Cursed Masters," this consistent approach to mixing subgenres is evolving with relentless patience. Olivarri goes the extra mile to elaborate on this unconventional songwriting to mature his meticulous construction of riffs. More shades of thrash and black metal add more color to their foundations in death metal, the variance in time signatures written into the songs are given freer reign, and that industrial wall of sound allows the unusual arrangements to flow freely and effortlessly.
As more artists freely share information about their work on social media, Olivarri deemed it safe to provide background on how he's developing his musicianship for Dirigiri. In one video he explains he has a certain method to transition from tremolo picking to breakdowns and maintain the same tone. Holding a flexible pick in a specific way allows him to play from his wrist rather than directly from his fingers, making it easier to transition without changing the position of his fingers or the pick.
He states by extensively practicing this technique before recording, he was able to play the songs so naturally that he often surpassed the pace of the metronome he practiced with. He mentioned feeling as though he was flying through the material, and that energy is carried throughout into tracks that confirm Dirigiri's role in breaking the mold of thrash and death metal, with sharpened clarity in every note and breakdown, bass rumble, drum hit, and vocal phrasing that displays greater contrast and diction. –Dave Wolff
Track list:
1. Holy Perversion
2. Cursed Masters
3. Burned at the Stake
4. Creature of Sin
5. Bury Your Dead
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