Imagine Jeff Buckley pursuing his hormone fuelled obsession with Heavy Metal and crazy time signatures rather than the gentle and amorphous heritage of 4AD and his father, Tim Buckley and you’re half-way toward understanding the tortuous, heavy riffing complexity of the RX Bandits.
With the exact coordinates existing somewhere between Muse, the Mars Volta, Finch, Bob Marley and The Beat (of all people), the RX Bandits latest album, ‘The Resignation’, currently out on the venomous and consistent ‘Drive Thru’ label, melds it’s fairly surprising blend of jazz, ska, nu-metal, punk and prog-rock into a truly convincing, if unexpected triumph of passion and ability over and above the wasteful vagaries of ‘yoof’. Matt Embree’s vocal muscle bears alarming weight, Steve Choi’s guitar carouses and Steve Borth’s Sax and Christopher Sheets trombone perplexes and delights in equal measures. A punk band with a horn section? Well it’s far more than that. The Brian Eno inflected, ‘Prophetic’, with it’s spiralling fairground intro and stuttering bombast may be bereft of true lyrical insight but the agility with which Embree, Choi, Borth and Sheets exchange ideas is phenomenal considering the vast majority of the album was recorded live and the band is, to all intents and purposes, a new line-up: Choi, Borth and Sheets stepping in shortly after the ‘Progress’ release of 2001.
The album proves beyond a question of a doubt, that in the right hands, music can move and exist outside of any boundaries. The brew may require a little more time to ferment, but it bears all the tell tale signs of something very tasty indeed.
Drive Thru are presently offering you something of unexpected worth. Take it in the spirit that is offered.