Search - Xbxrx :: Gop Ist Minee

What is this beautiful confrontational mess?

James Squeaky | The City that Works | 05/04/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you cold combine Devo, Brainiac, Trans Am, Crom Tech, and Le Shok, you might get something a little like the insane, ferocious energy of the songs on this all too short (just under 20 minutes) CD. Gop Ist Minee is terribly menacing and threatening, sort of like being permanently trapped in the head-monster level of a video game that you've spent weeks attempting to conquer.The songs have no titles and it's hard to tell if they even have concrete lyrics. It's all in the aggressive presentation of barking out the sounds like a schizophrenic with Tourette's Syndrome. Everything comes raining down at once and if you don't love this, you'll totally hate it.The keyboard action cuts through the guitar/bass like out of control shears, like I Am Spoonbender gone buck-wild. The synthesized high girlish sounding singing on track six (did I mention that there are no song titles listed on the CD?) interacting with the lower sharp keyboard singing sounds like an argument in a dorm room at a college for robots. I think at one point, R2-D2 joins the fray and reigns triumphant.But, when it comes down to it, XBXRX is pretty straight forward hard rock. You can bang your head to it if you so choose and pump your fist until you no longer have the blues.The live experience is NOT TO BE MISSED. (You can see my review of it in the "shows section" of my site: ...). Masks, calisthenics, waltzing, band members injuring themselves, broken instruments and all in the span of about 12 minutes. You'll be wondering if it was just a bad dream...Oh, and if nothing else, do check out XBXRX's website (...), because it has this really neat interactive noise-making keyboard thing that you can really make your computer make horrible sounds with. I particularly like the sound that "Z" makes."