The Dirty Nil

By employing heavy moves like grunge sludge, classic-rock riffage, and thrash-metal onslaughts, The Dirty Nil liberate themselves from punk’s typical leanness. The trio was formed by high school friends in Dundas, ON—an outlying part of the city of Hamilton—in 2006. They eventually started playing more and more in Hamilton, where the flourishing music scene provided a solid incubator. But The Dirty Nil cut their teeth motoring across the country, sharpening a raucous live show and churning out 7-inch singles until their full-length debut, 2016’s Higher Power. Angsty, explosive songs like “Wrestle Yü to Hüsker Dü” established the band’s ferocious sound, the inception of which was chronicled in 2017 with Minimum R&B, a compilation of early songs. In 2018, Master Volume, featuring the death vision of “Bathed in Light,” finds them engaging in more punk-rock precision and power pop. On 2021’s F*** Art and songs like the tongue-in-cheek “Done with Drugs,” the band continue to meld witty lyricism with swaggering rock ‘n’ roll.