* - Asterisk means I already had a good mp3 copy of this album, but threw up a few words anyway in the name of having an internet-based chronicle of all my legally-purchased, store-bought music

D

Damnation A.D. - No More Dreams of Happy Endings (1995, Jade Tree) - These guys decided to break the monotony of metallic hardcore bands just singing about unity or anger or being unified in anger, and instead decided to be cripplingly depressing as hell. Just the title of this thing alone makes me want to hurl myself under a moving train. For Christ's sake, there is a nearly ten-minute version of the Funeral March on here. Someone get these guys some powerful anti-depressants and a bunch of baskets of fat-ass kittens or something. Gonna hunt these dudes down and send them some edible arrangements, in case that delays their suicides for a little longer. Man.

The Dave Brockie Experience - Diarrhea of a Madman (2001, Metal Blade) - In the early 2000s, GWAR was at this weird crossroads, where both fans and band members alike were getting sick of Brockie's shit, and how he only seemed to want to write pop-punk songs about goofy peepee poopoo doodoo shit, instead of X-rated thrash metal space barbarism. So as part of the great upheaval that led to half the non-musician members leaving, DBX was formed, (basically being just Oderus, Balsac, and Jizmak from GWAR doing non-GWAR stuff) and it is absolutely nothing but Dave's peepee poopoo doodoo pop-punk nonsense, and I care for it a great deal. You guys should play "I Clean Up Real Good" at my funeral. Or hell, just play "You Want to Suck My Dick" instead, I won't care if people get all freaked out and angry; I'll be dead. Just like Dave Brockie.

*David Allan Coe - 17 Greatest Hits (1985, Columbia) - My cousin went to see this dude at some point in the 90s, and I don't know the full details, but I guess at some sort of meet-and-greet situation afterward, he just casually yanked up her shirt and popped a boob in his mouth. Things like that are weird to think about in modern times, when the phrase "outlaw country" refers to clear-eyed, fresh-faced former Linkin Park fans who drive unsullied pickup trucks with unscratched beds to frat parties and just absolutely respect the hell out of the police.

David Dondero - The Pity Party (1999, Ghostmeat) - They threw a lot of little (as in the venue was an alley with a roof over it) punk shows back home, and I went to a lot of them, and bought a lot of Cds and tapes and even a record or two from people whose music I really wasn't all that into, but who seemed like really nice people, and legit needed the money for gas to get to the next town on their tour. David Dondero is basically the guy who shows up to the party and/or coffee shop with an acoustic guitar, but plays original stuff, instead of just "Wonderwall" or whatever. This is pretty much 1000% the opposite of what I would ever want to hear, but he was really nice and legit needed money for gas to get to the next town on his tour, so here we are.

Day of Mourning/Clenched Fist - Split CD (1999, 13th Day) - Day of Mourning is one of those bands that's theoretically some form of hardcore punk, but is in reality absolutely, completely, 100% death metal. Not really my thing, but the song "Wading in Suffering" starts with that crazy-scary "We're being punished by the creator" quote from Day of the Dead, immediately followed by the heaviest, most evil riff ever, and it is A-Number-One Forever. Clenched Fist make sure to literally thank "all 900 bass players we've had" in the liner notes, which might be the most self-aware I've ever seen a band in a Cd booklet.

Dean Martin - All-Time Greatest Hits (1990, Curb) - Sometimes, it's just nice to have the atmosphere of an at least Olive Garden-level Italian restaurant in your own home. It makes you just want to sit back and fill up on complimentary bread sticks until you want to die, but then the moon hits your eye, in much the same manner as a large pizza. That's certainly something, I'm sure.

Death Angel - Frolic Through the Park (1988, Enigma) - This damn CD says that "Devil's Metal" is a super-special bonus track that's not on the vinyl or cassette versions of this, but I *have* the cassette, and that freaking song is on there. One of these days, I'm going to hunt down the LP, and if it's on there too, I'm going to have to abandon everything else in my life and hunt down the person who did the layouts for this thing and ask them why. It's maddening. HAS THIS WHOLE WORLD GONE CRAZY? DOESN'T ANYONE IN THIS COUNTRY CARE ABOUT QUALITY CONTROL ANYMORE!?

Death Angel - Act III (1990, Geffen) - Back in little kid days, (well, ten years old, which is a little kid to me now, at least) I really didn't give a crap about any of this, but there was probably some sort of latent metalhead inside inside of me already, because I'd still watch Headbanger's Ball with my brother on almost a religious basis. And for a while there, this was the biggest thing ever, and "Seemingly Endless Time" was the Ball Buster of the Week for what felt like a three-month stretch, (probably two weeks, but whatever) and Death Angel was right on the cusp of turning the Big Four into the Big Five, and then they crashed their bus and all almost died and disappeared, and it was depressing as hell. In other news, my copy of the live album that followed this seems to have utterly disappeared, because life is pain.

Deep Purple - Machine Head (1972, Warner Bros.) - I'm pretty sure the first time I ever heard "Highway Star" was on that Super Nintendo game, Rock and Roll Racing, where you're racing these tripped-out cars in space and shooting missiles at each other or whatever, while primitive chip tune versions of stuff like "Paranoid" and Bad to the Bone" play in the background. I'm pretty sure there was no actual first time for me to ever hear "Smoke on the Water," because that song is beyond the understanding of science that exists beyond time and lives within the fiber of humanity; it resides buried deep in the very conceptual atoms of our metaphysical being, and as such, has always been here. Think I heard "Space Truckin'" on the radio a few times.

Deerhoof - The Man, the King, the Girl (1997, Kill Rock Stars) - So, these guys played the alley in my old hometown once, and I always have to buy stuff from people like that, because again, they're always really nice and always legit need the gas money. But I had to work that day, I missed about half the show, including the set by these people, and man, if I had known, I would've just bought some stickers or something. This is just pointless, you guys. It's just this weird clanging and buzzing with a bunch of random words over it, like evil scientists tried to formulate the perfect act for an NPR host to pretend to like in the name of worldliness and/or quirkiness. But man, this is some bullshit, just utter nonsense, and we need to stop encouraging this sort of thing. They were really nice and only wanted $10 for the CD, though.

Demolition Hammer - Time Bomb (1994, Century Media) - The first couple records by this band (the ones I don't actually own) are pure thrash metal craziness, like Slayer throwing wasp nests at people. This... This sucks. I don't know what happened, like maybe they were hoping to sell more records or something more legit, but it's like warmed-over Pantera with death metal vocals, aka like every other band that no one gave a shit about in that gap between thrash metal and nu-metal as the dominant forms. The band broke up not too long after this came out, and that was the right move to make.

Dennis Miller - The Rants (1996 Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing) - Man, I dunno, this was on the used rack for a few bucks, I like comedy CDs, and I come from a simpler time when people still thought Dennis Miller was funny. We also wore an onion in our belt, because that was the style.

Desultory - Into Eternity (1993, Metal Blade) - I don't think I've listened to this more than a couple times since I bought it, (for 99 cents, hell yeah) and I really need to give it another try. As I grow older and softer, I grow more accepting of death metal, because my brain works in reverse, so I'd probably like this a lot more now. I seem to remember these dudes working on a different level anyway, all writing death metal songs about feelings and emotions, as opposed to, you know, death. All "YAAARRRRGGHHHH, I GET SAD SOMETIMES, BUT I'M DEALING WITH IT, RAAAARRRGGGGHHHHH" and whatnot. Okay, maybe not like that; like I said, I haven't listened to this in at least ten years.

Desultory - Swallow the Snake (1996, Metal Blade) - Whoa, what the hell happened here? This band went from playing strangely emotional death metal to some sort of groove-metal/heavy alternative kind of thing, and it's surprisingly good, compared to what usually happens when a band whips some shit like that on the people. Like if this had some out in '92 instead of '96, this probably would've been a minor underground hit, or least had a well-regarded Beavis & Butthead appearance. Sadly, it happened under the circumstances it happened under, so this is probably just the Load of the Swedish Death metal scene.

Devastation - Idolatry (1991, Combat) - Whoa, holy shit. Against my better judgement, I bought this, sight unseen and sound unheard, off the used rack around 2006 or so, based solely on a cool album cover and the mystery of the whole thing. and this is so good, it is god dang ridiculous. This is like the lost great Sepultura album, except I'm probably just comparing it to Sepultura based on the shitty Scott Burns/Morrisound Studios production that I hate so much, despite it being on so many records I like. How were these guys not at least underground-level huge? I wish I had known about this earlier, like back when I bothered to engage with heavy metal people online, because I would've evangelized the hell out of this, like I used to annoyingly do with Exhorder. (Which again, all has that same Scott Burns production. Maybe I secretly like that sound and haven't figured it out yet?) For real, though, this is amazing, and if we were on IRC chat in 1999, I'd want you to PM me your address, so I could send you a dubbed cassette copy of this.

Dio - The Last in Line (1984, Warner Bros.) - This is my secret shame: I only (legally) one but a single, solitary Dio album. (For the record, I also have this on vinyl and there's a CD copy of Holy Diver in the house somewhere, but my wife isn't as obsessive as me about her CDs, so it's just in a wallet or a binder, and I can't remember where those are) Dio is the best forever, and I love his entire oeuvre, but my rekindled love of all things Dio happened - again - right as I got high-speed internet and decided I wasn't afraid of the police. Gonna fix this someday, again, I am taking steps, just real slow, because I'm hella-poor.

Dismember - Massive Killing Capacity (1995, Nuclear Blast) - This Cd right here, holy crap, this is the ultimate. The most perfect example of what the possibilities are when a crazy brutal death metal band just decides to drop it down from eleven to maybe nine or so and let songs happen, as opposed to just a numbness-inducing pummeling. This is so unreasonably heavy, like it sounds like the guitars are tuned so low that the strings are just hanging off of them, but it still manages to be memorable and catchy. Real death metal heads seemed to absolutely despise the whole "death n roll" thing that Entombed started back in the day, but they're all bad people with bad opinions, because this is so good.

Drain S.T.H. - Horror Wrestling (1997, Mercury - I've got the 98 version with extra stuff) - I don't know what ever possessed me to buy this, like probably a recommendation from someone I trusted who I would never trust again once the BMG package arrived. This is the woooooooorst, you guys. It's just slow and dull and boring, and they did a cover of "Ace of Spades" that stretched the song from barely two minutes to five, and it is pure torture. I guess people pretended to like this because it was a bunch of blond Swedish ladies, and people into metal-adjacent forms of music were just thirsty as hell in 1997 or something, because I cannot possibly fathom anyone hearing this, and not just feeling sad for all involved.

Durge - ...Three times Bigger Than Frank Gifford's, Anyway EP (1998, Sick Duck) - This band was pretty much the ultimate band to ever play the local punk shows, like they were rocking the fuck out, and even did a cover of "Kickstart My Heart" one time, and it was amazing, even though I had much stronger negative feelings toward glam metal in those days. I even stage-dove a couple times, and somehow, all the skinny punk kids were able to catch my fat ass safely. It's weird though, because according to the internet, the Durge I knew was allegedly a Van Hagar version of a superior band, with like 3/4 of the members replaced. Normally, I'd scoff at such things, but around 2001-ish, I sent these dudes ten bucks for some split 7" they did with another band, and they just took my money and ran off with it, so I'm much more open to negative press about them that I would've been after overwhelmingly-positive live and CD EP experiences. Also, I was really bad at being a DIY punk rocker, because this is one of at least a couple "disk and paper sleeve in a plastic bag" style CDs that I sliced up and put in a plastic jewel case.