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May 26, 2023 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Steph Montani

Ontario punk outfit The Dirty Nil are back today with a pummeling new album, Free Rein to Passions. The album follows the band’s fourth full-length record, Fuck Art, which won the band new fans for their riff-heavy pop punk and a line of industry types offering to polish up their sound further. Their latest record is a creative response to those offers. Rather than creating something clean and meticulously arranged, Free Rein to Passions fittingly came about by the band giving themselves free rein, leaning into an intuitive back-to-basics process. The results deliver what the band does best: rollicking riffs, anthemic hooks, and raucous escapist fun.

The full album is out now, and accompanying the record the band have also shared a video for one of the album’s highlights, “Blowing Up Things In The Woods.”

“Blowing Up Things In The Woods” is pure explosive fun, delivering a charming and sharply-written tribute to adolescent pyromania. The track has a long fuse, building the verses on top of thundering drums and guitar dramatics, but the band truly kicks into gear with the chorus, launching into a shout-along anthem, complete with gang vocals and triumphant hooks. Frontman Luke Bentham sells the track beautifully, capturing all of the intoxicating euphoria of being a kid and watching something go boom: “But if the police come and stop our fun / We can hit the trail and see how bacon runs / They wouldn’t understand / The beauty in annihilation / We’re blowing up things in the woods.”

Bentham says of the track, “It’s an homage to our adolescence. I still have the scars on my hands from burning plastic and flash powder, would not recommend. I got chased down the street at 2am by a guy with a baseball bat and he was pissssssed, hid in a bush for 2 hours. When we were 16, we actually said to each other, ‘we should start playing music because these firework shenanigans aren’t heading in a good direction.’ Only time will tell if we made the right call.”

Meanwhile, he says of the accompanying video, “It’s been a long-standing dream of ours to collaborate with Hamilton’s Iggy Pop: BA Johnston. I had to run away during the opening sequence to stifle my laughter. A neighbour supplied us with a homemade firework (the metal one), which we detonated at the end of the day, functionally ending the shoot. The blast was so great, we heard dogs howling in the distance and we were jittery as all hell. We still may attempt to return that mannequin to Amazon. A good reminder of why we gave up on our pyro dreams for the comparably tame life of rock and roll.”

Check out the song, video, and album below. Free Rein to Passions is out everywhere now. Stream the record here.