Launchpad [Issue #22]
The Bronx: By Mandana Beigi
The Bronx (CD Island)

So, how about a band that shouts “welcome to your shitty future” and provides 3-D glasses to see them live on the “Bronx-O-Vision” tour? They claim that “[their] scientists are working overtime to ensure that optimum visual balance and musical gratitude are achieved simultaneously.” Their second self-titled album (and first major release) was recorded in a Venice Beach studio that was allegedly a former meth clinic where “vocals were tracked separately on a microphone that Hitler used to address the Motherland!” That is, in fact, the kind of weirdness and dark humor that makes you hooked on their music immediately.

They are LA’s own underground hardcore punk band that is proud to be dissident and dangerous. The Bronx - Matt Caughthran (vocals), Joby J. Ford (guitar), James Tweedy (bass), Jorma Vik (drums) - have been solidifying this enjoyable cacophony since 2003. After only one show at the Troubadour and no demo or EP, the band had nine major labels fighting to sign them. These noisy punk rockers are, by no means, ashamed of signing with a major label (Island/Universal); they are not afraid of “selling out” because they do not comprise their radical stance and vision in making nasty garage rock.

Co-producing the album with the unabashedly mainstream producer, Michael Beinhorn (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden), the band still managed to work their way out of the perfect-polished sound and keep all the miss-hits and off-notes in the recording; an effort to preserve the live experience on the disc. The album takes off like a rollercoaster of spine-snapping punk; it then stops on track 6, “Dirty Leaves” for a 4-minute rock-ballad-break before pumping up the adrenaline again by the fiery “Transsexual Blackout”.

The Bronx
Island

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