Diesel And Dust
by Midnight Oil

From buzzdainer TOP 100 COMMENTER 04/19/2020 16:59 | #250221 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

I went through a period of loving Aussie rock so much back in the late eighties that I wound up spending my junior year of college in Perth. Of all those Australian bands that I loved back then, Midnight Oil was probably the best, and is the one that has had the most staying power for me. They made a number of good albums, but Diesel and Dust was their best. It brings together the guitar-driven, punk sensibilities of their earlier albums with the more meticulously produced, more obviously political, more mainstream later works. "Beds Are Burning" was the hit single from this album, but I think "The Dead Heart," also released as a single, is even better: a moving, beat-driven meditation on the theft of land from the continent's aboriginal people.

From Brad1770 TOP 100 COMMENTER 09/10/2017 03:42 | #197685 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

The greatest Australian album ever made. Period. The band perfectly captures the Australian outback and nails commentary on the Aboriginal genoside and land rights struggles. The Dead Heart is the unabashed jewel in this crown & quite rightly is positioned about halfway through. Sadly this would be the last great Oils album with every release post Diesel middling to poor . Diesel and Dust - unforgettable, powerful, masterful & the greatest Australian album of all time

From jhuik TOP 100 COMMENTER 02/04/2012 12:19 | #36431 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Beds Are Burning remains a singularly epic radio song. The Dead Heart is excellent and was very dutifully redone by Alexisonfire (quite nicely imo). The rest of this has some fine songs including Put Down that Weapon, Woah, Bullroarer and Dreamworld. To me, though, the clincher that makes this album great is the killer, epic deep album cut Warakurna.

This is a record that I never really connected with in terms of its music and sound and I still struggle to really relate to it now. It lacks the edge and the power of records in its genre and feels a bit lacklustre on the whole. This may be due to the simplicity of the instrumentation or because there isn't a load to really get stuck into on here. Most songs are pretty similar and you do get bored of the style by the time you reach the conclusion of the record. I am not a major fan of the voice as well as it seems a bit generic for me. However, there are a few great tracks on here such as The Dead Heart and Warakurna which make this record worthwhile just for those two. Also, I think the lyrics of this album are a major strength as well as they have a good message and are well written. It isn't preachy but the message is clear and you can't miss it. Overall, I just could never connect with the music on here and I found the sound quite boring but I can see why so many people love it. (Edited)

This album was hugely influential on myself as a young teenager interested in music at the time, as it was to many other Australians. I found the clean sound production and thematic desert mood and sound so fascinating and absorbing for its time. There are some beautifully crafted songs on this album. This album presents a more polished Midnight Oil sound compared to most of their earlier albums but nobody can deny the positive influences this album promoted at the time it came out. Just my opinion but this album and INXS's Kick album really set a new sound production benchmark in Australia at that time.

85/100 - great sound production for its time / brilliant song writing and lyrics / hugely influential and groundbreaking record in Australia. Powerful, poignant (borrowing this word from the well said comment below) and tongue in cheek lyrics at times: 'put down that weapon, or we'll all be gone!' or, Gunbarrell Highways' 'Sh!t falls like rain on a world that is brown!