ArtistInfo

Defamation Of Character

Band,

A.k.a. D.O.C.

Okay, here's a D.O.Scene: Spring, Detroit, 1998. A terrible little bar in Detroit's Rivertown district, handful of people. Bumper to bumper homeboys and fly girls cruising the main artery to said venue have strangled traffic. Defamation of Character start late. The sound system sucks. The power keeps failing. Pissed, singer Doug Robbins begins pacing atop the bar as patrons scramble to save their drinks. With the power back on, Blake Jennings launches into the stutter-stomp guitar line from "A Test of Will" and suddenly this shitty little bar with this shitty little sound system with this shitty little turnout turns into New Year's fuckin' Eve. Drummer Kyle Heath and bassist Dave Schietecatte lay into an unholy din at an even more ungodly speed. It's a groove, to be sure, Robbins barking his full-throated rapped/sung lyrics while Jennings stabs over the top with guitar that sounds more like a DJ cutting and scratching records. But its energy isn't about any riff or funky lick, it's about this hard-sex of a pure adrenaline groove. The girls up front shimmy in seizures, while the guys nod their heads looking to mosh. Up on Jefferson, traffic is stopped and the kicker bass boxes in the back seats bump out booty jams, but Defamation of Character are the ones this balmy spring Motor City night kicking the real ass. Alive since 1992, kicking since 1996, Defamation of Character came out of Detroit's bored and angry Northern Suburbs like a million other would-be basement Metallicas. But somewhere between making bedroom studio demos inspired as much by House of Pain as Pantera and actually building the chops to pull it off live, D.O.C. have grown into the Detroit scene's most bluntly original and hardest hitting act. Blake tries to coin a phrase for Defamation of Character's brand of wide-groove. "Hardline/hardcore/funk/fusion…. It's hard to come up with a name for that. We just keep it heavy." He ain't kidding. On their self-produced 10-song debut, Donkey Show, D.O.C. pounds their way through a next-school lesson of what heavy rock is capable of when you free your riffs so your ass can follow. This ain't some friggin' funky white boy bullshit. Sure, there's some Korn here, some Tool, maybe even some Rage Against The Machine. But it's more like Defamation of Character have tapped into the same sensibility that once inspired Chuck D to say "Public Enemy's more rock and roll than most of what's called rock and roll." Recorded the extremely hungover day after their beloved Red Wings won the 1997 Stanley Cup and boasting, as Blake puts it, "Zero production," Donkey Show is the work of a rock band influenced by everything, from kicker bass to noisy samples, laying it down with a rawness that makes the recording as impressive as it is promising. Lyrically, there's the raw anthem-like quality of "Real Me," ("Fuckin' patronize me, I know who I am"), the sarcastic kick of "Sit Back and Relax," even the lust and lunging of "I Want," bringing a little artfully wielded testosterone into the usually adolescent hard rock arena. "I write about the stuff everybody goes through everyday, but the reality of how we play it and what we do with it is as far from real life as possible," Doug says, adding with a laugh, "A lot of it does come down to sex. But it's all about a good time. It's a different state of mind from most hard rock and we're proud of it." But for as proud as Defamation of Character are to have a self-produced CD to show what they're capable of even with mean post-Stanley Cup hangovers, the live show is their real priority. "We can't write a song just so it sounds good in the studio," says Blake. Doug pipes in, "It all comes down to, if somebody comes out to a show, it's worth the price they pay for admission. They're gonna go home happy," adding, "It sure as hell ain't about tweakin' some knobs in a studio." Defamation of Character have gigged around the admittedly slim pickings of the Detroit club scene, where it seems that bands outnumber the musically adventurous. It's hard to compete with the glut of touring national acts. "We mostly support the local (Detroit) scene," says Doug. From hanging out with the many bands who share their rehearsal space at Detroit's infamous Loft practice area Doug has determined, "We've learned who our real friends are." But where other Midwest bands never seem to get past the arena-rock-in-my-basement stage, Defamation of Character have proven that their thinking is as big as their sound, from their bare-bones/in-your-face "zero-produced" Donkey Show CD to their groove-heavy, next-school hard(est) rock sound. The fact that they've done so in the no-bullshit surroundings of the Detroit scene has only made D.O.C. work harder and think even bigger. --Defamation of Character (D.O.C.) Detroit 6/98

Members

	Blake Jennings g, bvoc
	Doug Robbins voc
	Dave Schietecatte b
	Kyle Heath dr

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