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If you spend a lot of time online you’ve probably run across a line or two from New York-based rapper DVS. He tweets at a rapid and brilliant pace over at the handle @DVSBlast, but his primary artistic endeavor has always been music and always will be. Last year the man born Dimitri Stathas released his latest mixtape, DVTV to critical acclaim from Vice and Stereogum. Before that, his feature-heavy 2014 Mutant League mixtape was met with the same acclaim.
But what’s that you ask? What about before that? Surely, DVS had a life before two years ago didn’t he? To that question I reply that yes, indeed, he did. In fact, in the years before Stathas fully became DVS he was once the singer for a New York hardcore band. That band was called The Sentinels and included a number of other members who have also lived many other lives since.
The lineup of The Sentinels included founder/drums Danny Robo, Sarah Johnson on bass, the aforementioned DVS on vocals, and Dan Klein aka “Brukky” on guitar, who later became the lead singer of The Frightnrs before his untimely death this summer. Guest vocalists Adam Citizen (of Model Citizen) and Jeff Filthskin (now EDM producer RumbleFilthskin) also crop up.
Spurred perhaps by the spirit of nostalgia and an increased communal internet-shared-joy in unearthing blasts from the past like these, DVS recently uploaded the band’s 2001 album 11:10 to Bandcamp. (Do you realize that was 15 years ago??) This album sounds like a Batman villain who may later, unexpectedly, turn good, combining his closeted love for noise-scuzz and penchant for class warfare with jackhammer guitar riffs and some seriously incredible bass lines. What I’m saying is, if you like weird internet ephemera, hardcore, or strange rap, you will probably love it. It’s above if that description suits you. It’s also above if it doesn’t. 11:10 is here now whether you like it or not. But you will.
