“We Dug a Ditch & Laid Down” by The Corrupted Hearts

Unsuspectingly potent and capable of destroying just about anything that gets in its way, the beat in the new single “We Dug a Ditch & Laid Down” by The Corrupted Hearts gets us into the groove of the music before we know what’s happening in the air around us. Swiftly and surely, this band plies us with a ton of heady guitar thunder and percussive gusts that could knock you off of your feet even at moderate volumes, drawing us into the spell with the kind of talented thrust that you don’t hear on the radio quite as much as you used to. The Corrupted Hearts are a true-to-form wrecking crew in this song, and for this new release, their attitude is quite the tone-setter, to say the least.

Beyond the beat, the melodic elements in “We Dug a Ditch & Laid Down” definitely feel just as heavy as any drum part we hear. The vocal is adhesively attached to the guitar, and not because of high-tech sound board manipulation, either. When The Corrupted Hearts get the ball rolling in this single, it’s hard to tell where the chest-beating energy is starting and where it’s fading into the background, almost entirely because of how synchronized their play is. It’s clear that they’ve spent a lot of time rehearsing and getting as tight as a couple of musicians can be before recording their first single together, and if they haven’t, then their chemistry together in this song is simply that memorable.

The mix here seems to have been designed to create a vacuum effect as we get closer to the finish, with the beats collapsing onto the melodic components right as it feels as though we’re about to reach an incredible peak. It’s a bit anticlimactic to some extent, but I wouldn’t say that it leaves me feeling unsatisfied when the last note disappears into the silence. Where a lot of other bands would have probably brought us full circle, The Corrupted Hearts want us to remain on the edge of our seats long after the music has stopped playing. Theirs is an untried formula without debate, and if given a little more time to properly develop, I don’t see why it wouldn’t produce quite lucrative results in the future.

Indie cuts are never easy, but in “We Dug a Ditch & Laid Down,” The Corrupted Hearts are exhibiting their professionalism and teasing an upcoming crusade that should be something to see. “We Dug a Ditch & Laid Down” doesn’t try to be a demonstration of virtuosity, nor does it attempt to fill a role left behind by some other rock song released in the past few years, if not decades ago. This is a single that doesn’t think too much about what it’s supposed to sound or look like, and it’s something that I think most rockers are going to find rather evocative. I hope to hear more like it soon, and I’m sure other fans of hot and heavy riffing are going to agree.

Bethany Page