Review Summary: The second album of Dust proves the excellent potential of the band. “Hard Attack” is a kind of an album as good as “Machine Head” of Deep Purple, but unfortunately, little known.
Dust is a band similar to a lot of bands of 70’s, with the sound and style of hard rock, the popular genre marked by bands like Deep Purple, Led Zepellin and Whitesnake. There was some bands as good as these bands but that unfortunately didn’t became so famous, (bands like T-Rex, UFO and other bands) and Dust is in this category. The potential of this power trio are in the integrants: Kenny Aaronson, Richie Wise, Marc Bell (after known like Mark Ramone) and the production and lyrics by Kenny Kerner.
After the good album “Dust” from 1971, the band released Hard Attack, a classic album, as good as some classics like “Machine Head” by Deep Purple. The album isn’t just an album of hard rock, but had a lot of influences by a lot of genres. “Pull away – So Many Times” starts the album, the track has an amazing melody mixing the folk of 60’s and the hard rock of 70’s, there is a good guitar solo, and specially – you can see very clear – the strong presence of Kenny Aaronson with a great base of bass increasing the quality of the song.
The instrumental “Ivory” is one of the best examples of the potential of Marc Bell as a drummer. It’s difficult to see how good he is in Ramones, because the chords of punk rock’s music are very simple. This track is a terrific track and shows not just the potential of Marc Bell but specially the potential of the guitar player Richie Wise.
“How Many Horses” and “I Been Thinkin’” are some examples of the different influences that exist in the album. The first has strong country and blues influences, with a great sweet melody and good lyrics becomes one of the best songs of the band. The second has country and folk influences too, it’s an excellent song and the calmest track of “Hard Attack”.
“Suicide” is the heaviest of the album and reminds Black Sabatth, with a great instrumental and the best guitar solo of the album, it sounds like a song of the best age of heavy metal. After this, the album closes with the best way: a fast and sweet instrumental song with the sound of a guitar. “Entanco” is very simple, and has only 28 seconds. The sufficient to end a classic album in the best way possible.
