The Bronx
The Bronx
Island / White Drugs
By Jose Fritz
I first saw the Bronx play at this New York club called Downtime probably about three years ago, liking them enough to buy the album after the set. I almost never do that because I am a stingy bastard and feel an arrogant sense of entitlement to free music as a card-carrying member of the record business.
It was a CD version of their picture disc, an Item that does not even appear in their official discography. I played the three tracks over and over enough times that if it had been vinyl I would have passed through it like a lathe.
They seem to have gotten a notch heavier and a notch faster, even surpassing Entombed, the Helicopters and even The Deadly this time around. Tracks like “Shitty Future” are as raw as exposed bone marrow and one wonders where else they can go from here.
It’s an album I welcome today. It’s the anti-emo. Like the Bugs and Rats LP that came out last year, they just maim each riff and present it to you, their loving fan, like a cat dropping a vivisected rodent at your feet. They have pride in their work and pride in the blood that it begets and in the carnivorous pack-animals way of life that it requires.
They are like Tora! Tora! Torrance! with badder bass lines or like the George Thorogood & the Destroyers catalog played double time by the original line up of Black Flag. What could be more bad ass than that? Nothing I say! It’s an approach they’ve been refining for years, after three full-lengths and half a dozen 7-inches they know how to get your attention, they know how to hold it and they know how to make the crowd lurch in fear.
They’ve taken a blood oath of loyalty and laid an imprecation on all those that stood against them. But I stand with them. I would recommend for your own safety that you do the same.
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