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XBXRX

XBXRX

Weasel Walter
Vice Cooler
Steve Touchton

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- Press photos -

  • 1
    Photo © Shannon Corr
  • 2
    Photo © Amanda Lopez

XBXRX

Anyone who's followed XBXRX from their teen years knows better than to try and predict their next move. That their radical bent has only grown with time is a marvel indeed.

The nearly two years since they recorded their last album SIXTH IN SIXES have seen XBXRX bringing their jubilant and notorious live shows to every corner of the Earth - but back home in their Oakland, CA basement they've been hard at work, testing themselves and their every musical assumption. The result is their best record yet!

WARS shows XBXRX in a state of constant struggle. It is both the tale of the many battles they have chosen to fight, and a way to cope with the ones they, and we, have no choice but to fight. More than anything WARS documents a band at war with itself, bettering itself. One listen and you can't help but be caught up in their frenzy. They champion those of us who can't understand how we ended up on this crazy planet, but are desperate to make something of our indignation.

XBXRX has always channeled that deep need to destroy into an even deeper need to CREATE. This is punk radically and ruthlessly reconstructed from basic elements, like an entirely new language wrought from dead syllables. For them punk is, and ever was, an ethic, not just a haircut and some guitar chords. Every roughhewn twist and turn in these new songs radiates restless genius, like diamonds in the debris of a crumbling civilization.

I keep saying "punk" but honestly where do you put XBXRX in the record store? There's something in their spirit that transcends genre, and you're as likely to encounter them in basements and art galleries as you are co-headlining the End Times Festival with the BOREDOMS, or opening for PEACHES, or SONIC YOUTH. Actually, to this listener XBXRX gushes with the kind of urgency that puts them in a league with early PUBLIC ENEMY: raw, politically charged, often funny, always HARD, rebuilt from the ground up, gaining its well-deserved following by word-of-mouth, requiring no endorsements from the mainstream.

And in a way XBXRX surpasses them all - without a hint of pretension, they can turn collective anger into a collective celebration. Anyone who's been to their shows has witnessed this magic firsthand. You grin in recognition of their sheer ingenuity. You laugh out loud at their audacity to do the outrageous and say what no one else will dare.

To call WARS "in-your-face" would be a massive understatement, but it's not really that simple. In place of the last album's almost inhumanly massive Wall-Of-Screech is a simpler, but ultimately more varied and listenable sound. The drums and bass are satisfyingly physical and immediate as they expertly build their steamrolling patters, only to interrupt them without warning. Every grain of guitar grit crackles before your ear. Assorted stompboxes make unexpected appearances and are just as suddenly discarded. And the inimitable charisma for which Vice Cooler is fast becoming famous, both in fronting XBXRX and as his alter ego HAWNAY TROOF, is captured better than ever.

-Greg Saunier