Dead Tree Seeds Dig Up Their Roots: Full Digital Re-Release
Photo courtesy of Maximum Effort France
Push The Button, the 2020 full-length from Parisian thrash outfit Dead Tree Seeds, is receiving a proper digital re-release. The album slots back into a discography the band has spent the last few years methodically excavating.
Formed in Paris back in 2009, Dead Tree Seeds have quietly built themselves into a reliable fixture of the French underground. Their sonic genealogy is drawn directly from the Bay Area and Teutonic sanctuaries: the venom of Slayer, the swagger of Exodus, the calculated precision of Testament, and the pure chaos of Kreator.
What makes revisiting Push The Button compelling is perspective. The record sits at a pivotal hinge point in the band's evolution. It forms a bridge between their early, untamed output and the razor-sharp, technically dense force they would become on 2022's Back To The Seeds EP and 2024's Toxic Thoughts. You can hear the architectural blueprint of both eras here: breakneck old-school aggression colliding with songwriting instincts that were clearly reaching for broader scale.
The album opens with "Thrash Tales," an instrumental preamble that eases in on melodic guitar before heavy crushing weight lands at the forty-second mark—a patient, deliberate table-setter. From there, "Fangs Of The White Wolf" comes out swinging with a primal vocal tear and a groove forged for headbanging, its solo staying true to form: short, hammered, in and out without a single wasted bar.
The record refuses to soften its grip. "No Time To Complain" stretches past six minutes without forfeiting structurally dense mosh territory, while the title track "Push The Button" leans aggressive with an eerie, megaphone-filtered vocal break at the 2:21 mark that snaps right back into the main riff. "Abjection" remains one of the record's most visceral cuts—dark, thrashy, and engineered to move a room.
"Enemies Of Rome" is where the lineup—driven by Aurélien Gonzalez’s primary songwriting and lead guitar alongside François Odonnet, bassist Sidi Assila, drummer Alex Prudent, and frontman Franck Le Hard—stretches out its boundaries. Six minutes of tight rhythm are punctuated by a genuinely chaotic guitar solo before slowing into something moodier near the four-and-a-half-minute mark. Listen closely: the feedback textures fold into the mix until they mirror the distant howl of sirens.
"Wailing Wall" eventually closes things down with a slow, grinding breakdown and a wordless, guttural growl, followed by "Shotdead"—the lone Nicolas Baudet composition—playing it straight down the middle like a proper early-90s thrash kiss-off.
Having recently wrapped a set at Hellfest Le Off, Dead Tree Seeds continue to prove that fifteen years in the dirt haven't dulled their edge. If you entered their world through Toxic Thoughts, Push The Button is the missing organ: the record that reveals how the beast was built.
Push The Button is streaming now on Bandcamp and all major platforms.
