
Drenched in a sweaty musical bliss, nearly every
song on Vitamin X's latest offering, About
to Crack, is backed by a moving, grooving bass line, not unlike what an
inebriated Lemmy Kilmister might scribble down for use
during a Motörhead set. As it turns out, bluesy solo guitaring proves to
be one of the more enjoyable qualities of the record and points at
"Fast" Eddie Clark, another, though departed, Motörhead
veteran. Much like the Brits before them, Vitamin X gather the best qualities
of metal and punk and create and accessible and wonderfully coherent product--a rarity for the former.
Instead of aiming for the average album's 30-minute run-time, Vitamin X take a complete u-turn and clock in at a blindingly fast 18 minutes.
To put things into perspective, rockers can listen to this record twice in the span one might spin a
"regular" album. Whereas the average record takes double the time to
sink in, About to Crack is extremely
easy to absorb after only two spins, but at a slight cost: many of the songs
fuse together and become indistinguishable from one another until listeners
sit down and analyze what has entered one ear and left the other.
But with that said, there's plenty of fun to be had and no strings attached when the party gets too crazy.
Want to grab beer and rage like drunken maniac? Go ahead. Vitamin X might be
straight edge, but they still embody the spirit hardcore punk bands have been
known for since, well, forever. The top tracks are the ones beginning
with excellent bluesy lead-ins, exploding into a disoriented mess of
locked-fist riffing and turbulent vocalisms. "Crank it Up" and
"Maelstrom" do exactly that, begging listeners to twist the volume
button higher as they recall punk’s heyday and quietly think to
themselves, "I dig this!" Vitamin X is truly at their best when they
mimic their idols and put their own twist on the style. The biggest surprise,
however, is the closer, a
Motörhead-esque piece of
metallic rock that simply will not exit the brain, even when skipping across the
rest of the record. Refusing to pass as a quiet resemblance, "Last
Laugh" is unmistakably Lemmy and indeed the best cut here.
One part hardcore punk, another Motörhead, Vitamin's X's music
is smeared with enough influence from Lemmy and the boys that anyone should be
able to make the jump into About to Crack
with relative ease. And, really, that's the beauty of throwing a few bluesy
licks over an extreme form of music--it suddenly makes everything so accessible and addictive.
All listeners can do now is echo the thoughts of others: Can
we have more?
-TMA
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