When a band builds up your expectations to the breaking point, you tend to expect something specific from them the next time around. With that in mind, is it possible to defy expectations... predictably? I ask this because in hardcore circles the ol’ Bait-and-Switch has become quite the redundancy. Perhaps because constant screaming tarnishes the lungs permanently, perhaps because it’s hip to dip then flip faster than a fish out of water in the hardcore scene, everyone from Poison The Well to Daughters have attempted the feat. About half of them — if not less, depending on whom you ask — have come out of their audio equivalent to plastic surgery with their dignity intact.
XBXRX must have decided they don’t like screaming anymore at some point, and to tell you the honest-to-god’s truth, it really bothers me. It’s rare to come across a shriek brutal enough to warrant extra attention, and the quintet’s Sixth in Sixes had enough larynx abuse to render me ready to lap up whatever they puked onto my floor. Now that their as-yet-nameless singer — along with his bandmates an anonymous musician — has saved his throat for the road, he’s come up with a new approach that will thrill fans of Snapcase and alienate everyone else. He emits a high-pitched yell now, one that isn’t by any means repellent; the only real criticism that could be leveled at his newfound style is that it isn’t as compelling as what he was doing before. But that’s about it; you couldn’t really ask for a smoother transition considering the problems many other hardcore howlers have faced once they start losing their grojo (growl mojo).
All things considered, he should buy his band dinner, because Wars is saved by their precocity. Never content to recycle the plastic riffs, hollow glass bass, and paper-thin drumming of their peers, XBXRX take it up a notch and deliver a gang-load of energy via scrappy, eternally dissonant arrangements that boldly go where few skronk-metal disciples have gone before. Much like the legendary releases of early-day Level Plane, Wars is as jarring and unpredictable as a shit-foreshadowing stomach rumble in the middle of a subway-car ride or a squealing stop when the semi in front of you suddenly forces you to grind your brake pedal into the floor.
In the day and age of The Blood Brothers, it’s common to jump from genre to genre, but XBXRX are much more fluent at switching gears, to the point where Burn, Piano Island, Burn’s transitions sound stilted and forced in comparison. Although Sixth in Sixes was a bit more shocking and delivered with more unchecked aggression, Wars is an encouraging step in the development of a band that’s been around longer than their ages might suggest. XBXRX were actually purported to have broken up in 2002, btw; here’s to hoping they bury/have buried the hatchet, as hardcore is in constant need of innovators to offset the bleak MTV2 generation of black-fingernails fem-metal bands.
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