Oxbow
King Of The Jews

The Oxbow were born one day (probably gloomy, at most an ordinary day) when the singer Eugene S. Robinson (a former boxer and esteemed journalist almost 2 meters tall) handed guitarist Niko Wenner several densely packed pages of lyrics that constituted Robinson's posthumous legacy, as he intended to commit suicide shortly after. However, that experience (which resulted in "Fuckfest," their debut) turned out to be so cool that Eugene decided to postpone the suicide to a much later date, and that's how, with the addition of Dan Adams (tall and lanky, fretless bass) and Greg Davis (big and burly, drums), Oxbow was born.

"King of the Jews" (a really cool title) is the second cesarean-discographic birth of the four Californians, always proud of having succeeded (eh...) first in Europe and then in America (where they only caught attention after two records released respectively by Neurot and Hydrahead), dating back to the year of the Lord 1992 - nineteen ninety-two.

We are in the presence of an album that hurts.

The kind of album that gets under your skin along with the astonishment of the initial "Daughter" (crescendoing string dissonances - mistreated samples in the background - then a clap clap outlining the rhythm, with the shrill voice beneath, followed by the bass guitar drums attack, a visceral and disorienting noise-crossover), continuing through the slightly alcoholic and psychomanic laments of Eugene Robinson, which might remind everyone a bit of David Yow (indeed, the frontman of Jesus Lizard). The track proceeds in dizzying dynamic ups and downs with fairly wild choruses, and the clapclap that magnificently reemerges from time to time. The rest of the album progresses even better: a zum-zum of dizzying and dark yet bright tensions, intimate and otherwise, sensual (the dragged blues of "Angel", for example), acidic soundscapes like never before, dilated crescendos, noisy episodes close to drone ("Earth 2" would be released the following year, it should be noted) and to musique concrète. As the album advances, it gradually loses any human concept of form, in a sort of feral and spiraling descent into the unknown.

To conclude everything, "Woe", which seems to return to the spasmodic yet almost 'regular' beginnings of "Daughter", then long minutes of silence and finally the ghost-track "Pannonica", four minutes which could be ten, twenty, or sixty, noises seemingly coming from hell over which nevertheless unfolds an acoustic guitar, melodic, one might say harmless, but that eventually gives way to pure noise. The volume is exaggerated, the conclusion is silent. The album is beautiful. You should have it.