X-Boyfriends, Destroy The Deck, Cheaper Than Speed @ Black Forest

Words and Photo’s by Joshua “The Fattest Of Ninjas” Finch

I’m a sucker for a rubber-faced, drunk, raucous, goof ball front man. The music doesn’t even have to be any good if you’ve got a focal point that’s just that much fun to watch. So now imagine if that singer/comedian/goof-ball found a backing band of mutant super heroes who actually happen to be decent musicians? I’m pretty sure that’s not exactly what The X-Boyfriends had in mind when they named their band, but goddamnit, that’s how I’m choosing to interpret it.

Billy D and the boys crooned, belched, and stumbled their way through a set of dirty-sexy barroom rock and roll that’d make Iggy and the boys proud. Catch ‘em if you can, folks.

Destroy The Deck is an unholy marriage of 90’s skate punk ala Screeching Weasel and No Fun At All meets proggy instrumental rock. Not so much both at once, they just do both. Fun, fast, sometimes all hooks, sometimes aggressive, these guys scratch alot of itches at once. It was good to see DtheD again, it’s been too long.

Cheaper Than Speed is the kind of high octane, jittery energetic snotty pop-punk implied by their name. For fans of the early Fat-Wreck days of Frenzal Rhomb, NOFX, and Snuff. These guys sounds like my childhood (all the way down to closing with a punked up cover of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song), so needless to say, I’m kinda stoked on ‘em.