D-Tension & The Secrets have released their eponymous debut album, ‘D-Tension & The Secrets,’ a nine-song set led by the single “Hate To See You Go.” The record spans rock, alt rock, punk and power pop without settling on any single lane for long.
The band exists because of an unlikely pivot. D-Tension built his name internationally as a hip hop artist, most recently touring with the late DMX, Ja Rule and the late Biz Markie, so his sudden turn toward rock and roll caught the indie world off guard. It started in March 2020, when pandemic lockdown gave him nothing but time and, thanks to what he calls a shady Instagram contest, a Fender Jazzmaster he had no idea how to play.
That combination proved productive. A hip hop producer with deep sampling instincts, known for work with Slug of Atmosphere, Blackalicious and Mr. Lif, D-Tension had also grown up with hippie parents and a sprawling record collection, giving him a walking knowledge of rock music long before he could play a note of it. YouTube lessons closed the gap fast. By Christmas of 2020 he was recording his own material, released the following year as ‘Secret Rock & Roll Project,’ with contributions recorded remotely by Craig Silverman of Agnostic Front, Frank Pino of the Andrew W.K. band, and Dresden Dolls and Violent Femmes drummer Brian Viglione. “Lock down had its advantages,” D-Tension says. “All I did that year was play guitar.”
D-Tension, who is on the autism spectrum, has
D-Tension, who is on the autism spectrum, has always described music as his superpower, and that instinct carried him straight through the shift from rapper to rocker without much hesitation.
Once the world reopened, the songs needed a band behind them, and The Secrets came together in D-Tension’s hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, the same creative pocket of New England that produced Jack Kerouac. A second album, ‘Tales From The Pub,’ followed on Boston indie label Red on Red Records as the group started playing shows and entered the world-famous Rock & Roll Rumble, proving in the process that this was never a rap-rock project. The songs lean on melody, hooks, tight musicianship, harmony and storytelling instead.
What the band had not yet done was record together, and ‘D-Tension & The Secrets’ finally closes that gap. Opener “Hate To See You Go” nods toward the Irish punk sound tied to Boston acts like the Dropkick Murphys, with echoes of Rancid and Flogging Molly, built around a drinking-song, sing-along chorus in tribute to friends the band has lost. From there the record moves through the psychobilly of “Banned,” the Warren Zevon-style dark humour of “Crime Spree” and an AC/DC-worthy rocker in “Violated.” D-Tension sums up the whole set simply: “Your favorite hour of rock and roll radio, where no two songs sound alike but are all rock and roll.”
Hate To See You Go began
“Hate To See You Go” began with the sudden death of D-Tension’s friend Lesley, a soul singer he had long talked about making a record with and never got the chance to. She died in isolation during the pandemic, without the proper send-off her life deserved, and the song became his way of giving her one. The lyric opens with a phrase from his own neighbourhood, a toast rather than an elegy, and widens from there into other losses that shaped him: a cat named Frankie he bottle-fed as a teenager after its mother died in childbirth, and a childhood friend nicknamed Turtle, the first person close to D-Tension to die young. Rather than write something mournful, he built a drinking song, an Irish punk send-off that felt right for someone raised in greater Boston, even if his own claim to the tradition amounts to little more than a rounding error on a DNA test.
D-Tension was inducted into the New England Music Hall of Fame in 2024, and has won two Boston Music Awards, a New England Music Award and a New England Urban Music Award along the way.
‘D-Tension & The Secrets’ track listing:
