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MUSICREVIEW.COM


Back in the late 80’s early 90’s, there were several collaborators trying to fuse metal and rap music, with varying degrees of success. Anthrax teaming up with Public Enemy, Rage Against The Machine, Linkin Park, Beastie Boys and Faith No More but it was all very schizophrenic and often the results were mixed, either a car crash or brilliant. That was until one Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit, almost single handedly killed the whole genre off by dragging its cedibility through the mud. More recently a new breed of (repackaged as rap-core) metal/rap fusionists have energed with impressive results. Gone are the crowbarred together bands and not-one-thing-or-the-other experiments. Look at artists like Korn, Kid Rock or P.O.D who straddle metal and urban rap with consummate ease and the popular re-emergences of Rage Against The Machine and the newly reborn Linkin Park.
Warm Wax from Dublin have embraced the genre and do it fantastically well. Blending metal riffing and guitars with funk bass lines and punk-rapped lyrics. Its a brave shout because its would be all too easy to get it horribly wrong, or sound dated, but they get it absolutely spot on. If their claim of only being together for one year is right then they must have worked incredibly hard to be as tight as they are. As a musician myself I know how hard it is to blend some of the styles that they make seem so easy. From the funk bass/back beat juiciness of ’Step Back’ to the moshy ’Urban Legend Kid’ or gritty ’Make my move’, WW bring the noise while keeping the back door tight as a funky mermaids nether regions (special credit to bassist Mark Mockler who works his nuts off and doesn’t drop a note). Michael Mead - vocalist/MC/lyricist never lets up and has clearly already mastered his art, even his use of an East Coast American accent - normally worthy of some stick for a European - works fine because its totally in keeping. Stripped to his gym-body waist, looking for all the world like a young Henry Rollins, Michael is a really great rapper who, I am sure, will get regular comparisons to Anthony Keidis of RHCP with his very similar, shirtless bouncing and machine-gun approach. The significant difference here is that Warm Warx has taken the bull by the horns and gone where the Chilli Peppers should have gone before they went all soft and stoned. The fact that Warm Wax already have some instrument endorsements confirms to me that the industry think they’re as potentially massive as I do. Excellent stuff.

Review by Drumhead

RANK: ****** 6 out of 6

http://www.musicreveiw.com/50.html

Warm Wax are a four piece band from Ballymun in Dublin.
We've known each other since primary school, but only decided to get a band going in 2001.
Thing is, none of us knew how to play our instruments at the time so we parted ways to learn how to play/write/perform/appreciate music.
All the while Mark (bass) and Lar (guitar) fluted around and made music in all shapes and forms to further understand music and it's many flavours.
In 2006 we decided that we had enough musical knowledge to make a few songs and gig them to get some stage experience and to see whether the music we were making was any good.
So, Lar and Mark called up Keitho (drummer) and got some gear together to start rehearsing. Unfortunately we didn't have a vocalist at the time and we were going no-where fast without one. So Lar's brother Mick stepped in (just to see if anything would click) and before we knew it we had a few songs and were ready to do a gig.
In October 2006 Lar signed us up to participate in GBOB (Global Battle of the Bands) for a couple of reasons, one was that we needed to do a gig before we all exploded from anticipation and it was only two songs that we had to play, so we decided to go for it.
We played our first gig and we loved it, the people in the crowd and most of the other bands seemed to like it too, and with that, we made it through to the next round. Eventually we made it to the national finals up in Belfast and competed against 10 extremely good bands but that's as far as we got. We were delighted that we made it that far anyway.
After that the gigs start flying in and we kept real busy doing shows, making new songs, meeting new people and making a name for ourselves in the local circuit. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that we have worked our way up significantly in the last 8 months or so, and it's only gonna get bigger from here.
As far as we're concerned, there's nothing like working in this business, the performances, the promotion, the buzz from constantly meeting new people and the opportunities.
There's nothing else I can really say at the mo except just to give us a listen and tell us what you think.....

Love Warm Wax.