Oxbow — Love That's Last
Oxbow’s abuse and rape the genre’s of blues, twisted noise rock and the avant garde to create, something that is whole theirs in sound and vision. Guitars twitch and screech, bass lines bend and suck flesh, drums pounding at your eyes, toped with the most real 'man on the edge' of breakdown vocals you’ve ever heard. Along the way they add subtle touches of piano and other instruments , but at its base this is seething rock. There’s not a duff track here,so it’s difficult to choose highlights, but a few of mine are: Insylum with guest vocals by Marianne faithfull, which opens the album and ease you in gently with a quite traditional structure. Bluesy rock slides down, with the mixture of Faithfull’s familiar tones, and manically soulfully screech of the bands singer Eugene Robinson. Yoke starts up with start stop bass, over off kilter rhythm, and then Eugene Robinson manic vocals kick in, with a gut level guitar screech, and banged out piano cords.The whole track seems to suck at you head with its claustrophobic world; you can feel the real seething emotion in Robinson’s vocal,added to by the other instruments audio torture. Bomb adds in twisted violin and violoncello, to the rock base to great odd, disconcerting effect, painting a strange nightmarish audio world. As Robinson screeches out phases like “god hates you, because god hates fools”. Quite unlike anything else you’ve ever heard.
As mentioned early, the second disk takes in the visual side of the band, there’s a lot to watch too. The near on hour long fascinating documentary about the band: Music for adults, which follows them on tour, and they come across as ever day guys, when their not on stage. But when their on stage, well it’s some of the most disturbing and pumped up performance's I’ve ever seen from any band, Eugene Robinson is a truly shocking and odd front man, as someone says in the documentary, “it’s like the band is raping the audience”. I won’t spoil it too much for you, but trust me you won’t have seen anything like this. Next on the disk are two live shows, one 45 minutes and the other 25 minutes and both are just as captivating and shocking.
All in all a superb package and a MUST buy for all wanting to test the limits of music and find a bit more about this unique band.